Off the Reservation

Five years after the massacres on the Blackfeet reservation in The Only Good Indians, survivor Nate Yellow Tail finds himself in hospital after a terrible accident that should’ve killed him, and has left his best friend Sebby on the brink of death. So when he is given the chance to reset his life, and maybe save Sebby in the process, Nate steps up again. This time into a camper van that’s as run down as his broken body, filled with three older Blackfeet, to find the bones of a Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where Indigenous children were abused for decades, and bring him home. But the past is more than bones, and the worst things you can bury can also be the worst to unearth Jones has crafted another American Indian novel for our times, shining light on the dark corners of the USA’s history, and showing the desperate choices people make when they’re put up against a wall.