“The Only Good Indians” extends spooky season into Novembe

If you’re looking to carry the spooky season past the end of October and into the colder months, look no further than “The Only Good Indians,” the 2020 horror novel by Blackfoot author Stephan Graham Jones. Ten years after a hunting trip gone very wrong, four men find themselves grappling with the consequences as they find themselves being stalked and hunted by the spirit of a vengeful Elk whom they wrongfully killed.

“The Only Good Indians” is a novel concerned with messiness and imperfect people. Themes of identity run thick as Jones’ characters attempt to identify for themselves what it means to be a “Good Indian” and how to square their indigenous identity with the combative world they live in. In regards to the novel’s horror elements, though there is a sizable murder count by the end, most of the horror comes from the buildup—the slow, creeping feeling that something is wrong and the deep-seated knowledge that no one will ever believe you.

Granted, while the horror in Jones’s novel is largely psychological in nature, it is far from a gore-free story. (Seriously. There are scenes of graphic violence involving both humans and animals. You have been warned.) As a writer, however, Jones understands the value of restraint, and the breathing room he gives between the bloodier scenes makes them hit all that much harder.

The first third of the book, subtitled “The House That Ran Red,” concludes with a spectacularly bloody scene that I don’t think I’ll ever manage to forget. The shift to violence works because of the writing’s slow transition from mundane daily life to absolute devastation. Jones makes it feel like a natural progression of the events that preceded it and simultaneously something completely jarring.

However, this slower pace at the beginning of the novel was a bit of a stumbling point for me. I actually put the book down for about a month before a long flight gave me the opportunity to get back into it. Looking back on the buildup now, I can appreciate it for what it accomplished, but on a first read, it was a bit hard to get through. From there, with the stakes properly established, the book picks up rapidly. The final two sections, particularly “It Came from the Rez,” were increasingly hard to put down. Bodies start dropping, and it’s immediately clear that Jones is in his element, artfully weaving together native culture and contemporary horror.

Special praise should be given to the brief periods in which Jones shifts the novel’s point of view into second person, putting you, the reader, in the shoes—or hooves, rather—of the killer. It’s deeply unsettling and would have easily fallen flat if executed by a less talented writer.

“The Only Good Indians,” even in its most genre-heavy moments, is always conscious of the larger historical context that it exists within. Throughout the novel, there is this throughline about the trauma that we pass on to our children and the way that the choices we make affect the next generation. The parallels this establishes between different characters, as well as between hunter and hunted, aren’t something I can get into without heavy spoilers, but they form an emotional core that’s nearly as emotionally affecting as the heavy dread throughout the rest of the pages.

With a carefully crafted world that feels real and weighty, the high moments of Jones’ writing are well worth any of his novel’s slower bits. So, if horror is a genre you love, or just one you’d love to check out, I highly recommend you pick up “The Only Good Indians.”