Bones Picked Clear
by Jen Poteet
Style: Literary Fiction / Appalachia / Myths & Legendary Creatures
ISBN: 9781960522078
Print Size: 164 pages
Reviewed by Samantha Hui
An Appalachian love story that explores the reality of cryptids and complexity of the human spirit
Jen Poteet’s Bones Picked Clear is a love letter to nature and Appalachia. The story interweaves idiomatic expressions and superstitions into recent, new characters who really feel acquainted to the reader but fully, charmingly distinctive. The guide gives a sympathetic take a look at the brutality of nature that additionally offers again in return and, equally, the frustration of some individuals who finally serve a significant objective in our lives.
“‘Simply because your coronary heart was meant for one thing apart from what another person deliberate for you, didn’t make you ineffective.’”
Within the woods of Appalachia, this story begins and ends with Chicory residing in Granny’s home on Darkish Holler Lane. Chicory is whip good, form, and fusses over those she loves in the identical means her Gran did for her.
Chicory wards off evil within the methods handed all the way down to her from Gran: pouring salt in doorways, burying hair, nailing railroad spikes on the corners of properties. Her peculiarities draw her to her equally distinctive buddies: Hawk, a boy from the Cherokee tribe who loves as onerous as he fights; bookish Loretta who was compelled to be a caretaker too early in her life; and Emory, who’s fascinated by cryptids and fiercely loyal to nature and his family members.
“‘However simply take care, and hear what I inform you. These woods, they’re a difficult type, and for all their bounty, there may be simply as a lot round right here could make you sick. So, you be taught what to not take and what to not eat as effectively.’”
At one level, Chicory is described as feeling as empty as a skeleton with its “bones picked clear.” The picture is despairingly violent, however there may be additionally a way of pure reciprocity. Although the physique has died, it has returned again to nature, having fed its wild animals.
This guide offers with cycles and returns. The evil that has been wronged will search revenge in flip; life strikes to demise again to life and so forth; the summation of all of the successes and failures in life will convey Chicory precisely the place she must be at the moment.
“Akin to the cycle of life and demise, time moved in a cyclical nature with the seasons.”
Every chapter is titled with a unique idiom or catchphrase equivalent to “There’s a Fox within the Henhouse,” “Beggars Can’t Be Choosers,” and “Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fireplace.” In the way in which that Gran handed down sayings, superstitions, and practices to Chicory, with every chapter, it feels as if the reader additionally learns a brand new message.
Moreover, the characters have likelihood encounters with cryptids that the characters seek advice from as “Moon-Eyed Folks” or “Not Deer.” Although these harmful creatures assault the characters and recur all through the story, they’re thought to be one other sort of wild animal versus main threats within the plot. I loved this element, as a result of it recommended that even these risks have a spot on this planet.
“Most of these creatures adopted the Path of Tears feeding off the ache and unhappiness of the Folks. What had been performed to them was so terrible, that irrespective of the place one’s ft have been planted, that floor had been stolen, and people who got here to grasp that, felt deeply the ache and unhappiness.”
Bones Picked Clear is a tenderly written ode to Appalachian life that may be loved in a single sitting. The chapters are poetic of their brevity, and the characters are charming and sympathetic. Collectively, Chicory and her buddies navigate a tumultuous world that ensures nothing however hardship, however finally gives the hope of connection and love.
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