A Bloom of Bones

September 12, 2016
In this raw, honest novel Jones introduces readers to Eli Singer, a solitary Montana rancher and poet forced to
confront his life choices when a corpse is found on his hillside property. The discovery has gruesome implications and sparks hushed rural gossip about Eli’s stepfather, Buddy, plunging Eli into
long-neglected corridors of his past. Chloe, a literary agent from New York representing Eli, comes to visit Montana after months of email exchange—ostensibly for work, but quickly the interactions turn romantic, though it’s an awkward time for the visit. Everyone in town agreed Pete Fahler, the dead man, had been a two-faced piece of scum, but did he really deserve to be murdered? Is there a limit to the search for justice? Does morality blur in the face of revenge? Is an honest man always to be trusted? Jones’s novel forces readers to meditate on weighty issues as events unfold and Eli’s warped upbringing and relationship with his stepfather are placed under the microscope. Though the book’s conclusion leaves several loose ends, readers who enjoy crime novels and literary whodunits will find the story gripping.

October 1, 2016
Eli Singer is a renowned poet whose artistic sensibilities are like "[Wendell] Berry meets Bukowski," but his elegant verse is crafted by a haunted man. Remote eastern Montana is a place where the wind, cold, and isolation break men and drive women mad, and so it was for 12-year-old Elis mother. First a housekeeper for Buddy Singer, bachelor rancher, and then his wife, she struggled with loneliness, boredom, and her failure as a parent. Eli and his 14-year-old sister, Emma, took their stepfather's name, but soon Emma ran away to share the bed of a neighboring rancher three times her age. There was a scandal, then two people died. Decades later, only Eli knows the true story, which comes in flashbacks that expand the scope and deepen the resonance of this tale, one of love and family set against a rugged Old West ethos. It begins after middle-aged Eli is pulled from his isolation by Chloe Barnes. Eli makes a rare trip to New York City to meet with his publisher, and while there, he is introduced to Chloe, a literary agent. The attraction is mutual and magnetic. First, its all telephone calls, but then Chloe flies to Montana, and two damaged souls stumble toward connection. Soon, though, the love story is framed by a clash of morality. A thunderstorm exposes a hidden grave; a murdered man surfaces, the corpse suspiciously secreted on Elis land inherited from Buddy. Both Eli and Chloe are thoroughly human, flawed people yet sympathetic protagonists. Chloe seeks a hero, a protector, stability. Eli is guilt-ridden, closed off, gut-wrenchingly lonely. With broad strokes painting an eastern Montana landscape and flashes of insight about the people who cling to its land, Jones rides past the softer romances of Nicholas Sparks into the hard country populated by the best of Western writers. Jones (Last Years River, 2001, etc.) has written a most American of novels, bristling with hard truths.

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October 1, 2016

In this engrossing Western tale, a representative of a New York literary agent visits Montana to meet with a poet-rancher client. Young New Yorker Chloe Barnes has been emotionally adrift in the city, while Eli Singer is a stoic, middle-aged rancher with a literary gift and a poetic style somewhere between Wendell Berry and Charles Bukowski. A relationship that begins as a halting friendship eventually becomes a tentative love affair played out against the backdrop of a 30-year-old murder after the spring rains reveal the body of a long-missing neighbor buried on Singer's property. The ensuing investigation will unearth the bitter secrets of Eli's troubled past and threaten to send him, and possibly Chloe, to jail. The dry-as-bones Montana landscape perfectly captures the emotional state of the story's two central characters as they struggle toward something each wants but neither quite knows how to get. VERDICT Jones's (Last Year's River) novel seems to have emerged from an older, more elemental world, a mythic, almost biblical place where it's taken for granted that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons. And yet, in Eli's and Chloe's relationship, the author suggests this ancient darkness can ultimately be transcended.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

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