The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham JonesMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
"What I am is the Indian who can't die. I'm the worst dream America ever had."
My first five-star-read-that-I-shall-try-to-shove- down-everybody's-throat book for 2026 is a historical novel that also happens to be literary fiction and horror. "Butcher's Crossing" meets Anne Rice in a Native American (specifically, Pikuni) revenge fantasy that rings true ... because it is.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a multi-generational tale of the white man's greed and cruelty, and the vengeance that takes the form of the Nachzerer, with a penchant for visiting Lutheran churches to confess to its pastor. Stephen Graham Jones has written, with masterful technique, a novel that I hesitate to call a "vampire thriller," though it is, decidedly, both thrilling and features the undead.
It is so much more than its marketing labels.
It is written in three different voices to match the three main characters, utterly convincing in their tone and word choice despite being apart culturally and in centuries. The novel is also a metaphor for the corruption of "America," from the time of Lewis and Clark, and reminds its reader of the true horrors of the Marias Massacre (also known as the Baker Massacre), and the Starvation Winter brought about by excessive killing of buffalo.
"In all of my stories I'm crying... This, I believe, is the story of America, told in a forgotten church in the hinterlands, with a choir of the dead mutely witnessing."
Despite its 450 page length, this is a rousing epic, with a story that will live inside this reader for years to come, that leaves one breathless with awe. Such is the power of the written word: to keep whitewashed history alive, using commercial literature to tell it to as many people as possible. In this way, the author has ensured that the great evil done to his forefathers will never be forgotten.
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