RETURN OF THE BONES - Inspired by a True Story
by Belinda Vasquez Garcia
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A thirty-five year-old Native American and her 98 year-old grandfather drive from New Mexico to Harvard University to claim 2,067 skeletons stolen 85 years ago by archaeologist, Alfred V. Kidder. Hollow-Woman and Grandfather are the last of the Pecos Indians. He raised her since birth but was emotionally distant because he feared she might die before him like the rest of the family. She is of the modern ways and works at an Indian casino, while Grandfather is of the old Indian ways. He values tradition. She wants nothing to do with family skeletons but hopes the road trip will heal their broken hearts. He hopes she will come to appreciate her ancestors.
In a ratty camper, they bicker along the miles as the cantankerous old man struggles to persuade her to love, as he does, the missing bones. Though their family pueblo was abandoned 161 years earlier, the bones are still family, he insists, for blood flows from generation-to-generation. Using his Shaman powers, he weaves a special dream catcher to show her the history of their people. She also has a campfire read, Alfred V. Kidder's diary, which Grandfather found when he secretly witnessed, as a young boy, the dig of the family ruins. For daytime she has the wisdom of Grandfather, who is steeped in Native American spiritualism with a sometimes comical interpretation of the world.
Tony Hillerman Blurb || About the Pecos Bones
