The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

February 1, 2025

Bestselling and award-winning Jones (I Was a Teenage Slasher) offers a historical horror story set in the American West. A Lutheran pastor's discovered diary from 1912 details the life of a Blackfeet vampire searching for justice and revenge after a massacre of the Blackfeet people. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2025
"What I am is the Indian who can't die. I'm the worst dream America ever had." So says Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire who roams the Montana prairie in 1912 looking for vengeance, to Lutheran minister Arthur Beaucarne, whom he visits each Sunday to give his confession. The book is told through the journals of Beaucarne--records of the minister's own life but also Good Stab's confessions--as read by the pastor's great-great-granddaughter, Etsy, a hundred years later. Jones (I Was a Teenage Slasher, 2024) immediately immerses the reader in his harrowing world. Tracing the Marias Massacre of 1870 and recalling the atrocities inflicted on the buffalo and the Native people, the story charts the growing explicitness of each Good Stab confession, each one increasingly tense, violent, and accusatory, while Beaucarne begins to unravel and reveal his own horrific secrets, secrets that reach across time to Etsy. A riveting story of heartbreak, death, and revenge, this remarkable work of American fiction, a thought-provoking tale filled with existential terror, unease, and a high body count, transforms, in Jones' deft hands, from the unapologetic horror novel it most certainly is into a critique of the entire idea of the United States--a critique that, despite the horrors, both real and supernatural, is forcefully infused with both heart and hope.

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February 1, 2025

Etsy Beaucarne is a professor under pressure to publish more, thereby securing tenure. When a dayworker finds a 1912 manuscript written by Arthur Beaucarne, an unknown relative, she may have found a way. Arthur's journal tells of his life as a pastor while transcribing the account of Good Stab, a man from the Blackfoot Nation who says he is a vampire. These three distinct narrative voices are layered within the novel, and each voice contributes to a compelling story that draws readers forward, even as the terror increases. The horrors of historical atrocities are described while also bringing readers along in a deep exploration of identity, revenge, guilt, and the potential for hope. While this is a unique vampire story, it is also grief horror, portraying the mourning of a land and a people, inscribing profound sorrow for what was and what can never be again. VERDICT Jones (I Was A Teenage Slasher) holds up past atrocities and their impact into the future. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical horror with family history, such as Andy Davidson's The Hollow Kind, or for those who loved the anthology Never Whistle at Night.--Lila Denning

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