The Only Good Indians: #Spooktober Book Review — chasing destino

“An elk mother, cornered, will slash with her hooves and tear with her mouth and even offer the hope of her own hamstrings, and if none of that works, she’ll rise again years and years later, because it’s never over, it’s always just beginning again.”
― Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians

Goodreads Synopsis:

Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

Review:

Most of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones is set in Montana. Ten years ago, four American Indian teenagers — Gabe, Cassidy, Ricky and Lewis- decided to hunt in a restricted area. Not only did they hunt where they weren’t supposed to be, they killed a lot of elk, including a female elk that was pregnant. They were banned from the area for life.

Apparently, being banned was not a sufficient punishment for the spirit that later becomes known as Elk Head Woman. The spirit appears sometime around the tenth anniversary of the hunting incident. She starts picking off the four men. Her plan is to end the life of the only descendant, Denorah.