In 1915 at the age of thirteen, Grandfather witnessed the theft of 2,067 family skeletons stolen from the Pecos Pueblo. He had run after the trucks transporting the bones, their skulls hanging out of windows and eye sockets hollow, until he stumbled and fell with his ear to the ground, listening to the rumble of tires carrying his ancestors far away from their resting place. Grandfather lay on the dirt clutching a diary belonging to the thief in hopes that one day he might use the book as a clue to finding the remains of his missing family. If only the old man could read. He kept the secret of the stolen bones for 84 years because he feared the men who took the skeletons might come for him, too. Now, he begs his granddaughter to help him bring home the bones for reburial at the wreckage of their family pueblo, for he hears the skeletons crying, longing for home.
Hollow-Woman and Grandfather are the last of the Pecos people, but she wants nothing to do with the ghost pueblo of Pecos, a place which gives her the creeps. The family ruins is haunted by the Spanish Inquisition, church burnings, beheadings, blood spilling, ghosts, witches, and poisonings. Grandfather, an ancient ruin himself with one fist in a Pecos grave and the other in a bottle of wine, pleads with her to help him find the stolen bones of their ancestors, skeletons centuries old who should have turned to dust ages ago.
Hollow-Woman doesn't care about ancient bones. She works at a Native American casino and is of the modern ways, but she reluctantly agrees to drive the old buzzard cross country on his quest to bring back the missing skeletons to the rubble of their family pueblo so they might join the other ancestral bones who Grandfather claims haven't had a night of peace since the others were ripped from their graves by the thief whose motives are hidden in his diary.
Grandfather is a powerful shaman who believes his granddaughter does not appreciate family. He fashions a magical dream catcher that sometimes hurls Hollow-Woman into the past to experience the lives of her ancestors, some six centuries of sorrows, triumphs, and the dark side of religious fanaticism.
In their odyssey to find their missing family, they discover what the Pecos skeletons have been up to for eight decades since being held captive, and how important the desecration of the Pecos graves is to America and to mankind. Most importantly, she embarks on a spiritual journey and truly comes to appreciate the ties that bind a family's past and present.
RETURN OF THE BONES is an award winning book and first-place winner of Best Historical Fiction for the New Mexico / Arizona Book Awards.
In Return of the Bones, author Belinda Vasquez Garcia weaves a mystical story, based on the actual history of the removal and shipment of ancestral bones from the Pecos archaeological site to the Peabody Museum at Harvard by archaeologist, Alfred V. Kidder in the early 1900’s - and the quest for their return by the people of the Jemez Pueblo in 1999.
Return of the Bones is a novel inspired by the true story of the theft of 2,067 skeletons from the former pueblo of Pecos in 1915. For 84 years, these skeletons would be studied and examined, but at what cost to society? Return of the Bones tells of an elderly grandfather who felt the bones' yearning to come home ever since they were stolen away, but his granddaughter Hollow-Woman doesn't want to hear it. As the two of them take a road trip, the grandfather creates a dream-catcher to aid his grandchild in "seeing" the past, in the hope that she might better respect her ancestors and their remains. A novel of family ties that stretch far past immediate generations, Return of the Bones encourages the reader to think long and hard about what should or should not be condoned as acceptable behavior toward other people's ancestors. Highly recommended.
The Winners in the 2013 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards were announced on November 15 at the Book Awards Banquet.
Fiction - Historical Fiction Garcia, Belinda Vasquez Return of the Bones Magic Prose
