A Bloom of Bones

“Allen Jones’s A Bloom of Bones is simply riveting. Always lyrical, often wise, filled with vitality, and the promise that love and loyalty can surmount the darkness in our lives. I couldn’t put it down.”—Mark Spragg, author, Where Rivers Change Direction and An Unfinished Life

“What a terrific novel Allen Jones has given us! Two attractive but emotionally isolated people, a rancher on the starved-to-death plains north of Jordan Montana who has written his way into nationally interested poetry, and a young woman who represents his New York publisher. A progressing love story and an unsolved murder on his ranch—A Bloom of Bones is articulate, occasionally heartbreaking, and all the way fascinating.”—William Kittredge, A author, Hole in the Sky and The Willow Field

Eli Singer, a rancher and poet in remote Eastern Montana, sees his life upended when a long-buried corpse—which turns out to be a murder victim from Eli’s childhood—erodes out of a hillside on his property. This discovery forces Eli to turn inward to revisit the tragic events in his past that led to a life-changing moment of violence, while at the same time he must reach outside himself toward Chloe, a literary agent from New York whom he is falling in love with. In the tradition of such classic western writers as Thomas McGuane, James Lee Burke, Ivan Doig and Jim Harrison, A Bloom of Bones is a poignant and moving exploration of family, community, and the echoing ramifications of violence across generations, as well as a genre-subverting literary mystery.

Allen Morris Jones is the author a novel, Last Year’s River (2001, Houghton Mifflin), which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover pick; a highly-regarded exploration of the ethics of hunting, A Quiet Place of Violence; and co-editor, with William Kittredge, of The Best of Montana’s Short Fiction. Over the course of his career, he has published numerous articles, essays, short stories, and poems across a wide variety of publications. As an editor, he was overseen the acquisition and development of more than one hundred titles, most recently for his own business, Bangtail Press. Living in Bozeman, Montana, five minutes from the Gallatin River, he is currently Editor in Chief of the highly-regarded magazine Big Sky Journal.