Turning Bones

The last living member of his Martin family, the author attempts to reconcile the facts of his own life with the history of his ancestors in this lyrical, imaginative work. Most of Martin's relatives were farmers in the Midwest,""hard workers, but for the most part...uneducated."" Because they left behind""no letters, no journals, nothing written in their own hands,"" Martin turns to court and county records, as well as to fiction, to re-create their past. The shifts between this fictionalized history and Martin's own fact-filled memoir may provoke some difficult transitions for his readers, but the beauty of his obviously heartfelt words makes up for this awkwardness. One of the most powerful sections in the book vividly juxtaposes a story about the day that great-great-great-grandfather Martin bought his only slave with the author's memories of the whippings he received from his own father. Martin's fictionalized writing doesn't match the skill he displays in his autobiography; he creates more nuanced portraits of the people he actually knew, while his fictional family portraits tend toward hagiography. His characters speak in vague language, especially the women in the romantic scenes; they also usually end up making noble choices, even when those choices are out of step with their times. As Martin himself shows in a chapter that describes how he lied to the police, his father and a judge to avoid a hearing for a car accident, even good people sometimes make bad choices, something few of his fictional ancestors ever do. Nonetheless, despite these minor faults, this ambitious work weaves together many strong, intriguing people, brought together by a skillful writer for a family reunion across time.