The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Bestseller Jones (I Was a Teenage Slasher) astonishes in this ingenious, weird western reimagining of the vampire tale. In a frame narrative set in 2012, academic Etsy Beaucarne learns of the discovery of a 1912 manuscript hidden in the wall of a Montana parsonage, written by her great-great-great-grandfather Arthur. Within lies Arthur’s transcription of the personal history told to him during confession by Good Stab, a Blackfeet warrior. Decades earlier, Good Stab was bitten by a being he refers to as “the Cat Man,” a caged, feral creature transported by an ill-fated expedition of white settlers. That bite endows Good Stab with supernatural powers of healing and regeneration, but also a voracious thirst for blood, which he slakes by preying on the white hunters ravaging the frontier through their profligate slaughter of buffalo herds. Good Stab’s horrifying ordeal offers a dark window into the history of conflict between America’s Indigenous inhabitants and its white colonizers, with Jones incorporating details of the real-life Marias Massacre of Blackfeet by the U.S. Army into the plot. Jones heightens the impact of the massacre’s recounting through Good Stab’s narrative voice, whose easy incorporation of lore and myth into his vernacular makes the supernatural seem believable. It’s a remarkably well-wrought work of historical horror that will captivate Jones’s fans and newcomers alike. (Mar.)