The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Book Review
This is an Indian story, I think, rancher man, and you’re on Indian land whether you admit it or not. We all are.
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians comes a tale of the American West, writ in blood.
This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice.
It begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveiled is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits.
This is an American Indian revenge story, captured in the vivid voices of the time, by one of the new masters of literary horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
REVIEW
Much like Good Stab had to tell his story to Pastor Beaucarne in a piecewise fashion, I felt like I had to read this book in a similar manner to fully absorb it.
I don’t think I have ever read a book quite like this one before. It’s certainly difficult to describe, though I suppose “historical horror” truly is the best way to categorize it. And while I appreciated both the historical and horror aspects of the story (really, Jones did such a good job of marrying the two), it’s the former that I think readers should really internalize and learn from. Besides the fact that I couldn’t do The Buffalo Hunter Hunter justice by trying to further write out and detail my thoughts in this review, I don’t want to spoil any of the story in my attempt to do so. As such, I’ll just end with this:
This is a book I’d recommend everyone read at least once.
I implore you not only not to burn this, but to frame it for all to see, such that such darkness in Man can be known, and then avoided.
Thank you so much to Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for the free copy for review.
Original publication date was 18 March 2025.
Author Profile
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and I Was a Teenage Slasher. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.
