Top reviews from the United States
Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2021
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Donan Berg’s A Body To Bones offers an enthralling mystery that is evocatively embedded in middle-American small town life of the 1960s. Berg’s ability to draw the reader completely into this Iowa town, using the Tom Hamilton’s local newspaper as both the historical and social heartbeat of community, makes this novel stand out from most in the genre.
Yes, the presence of hidden bones in a factory provide intrigue that will carry the reader through the deftly crafted plot, but it is the immersion in the small-town of fifty years ago that makes the work such a pleasure. Berg knows how to develop characters. The shady lawyer George Windhurst is folksy hoot, constantly cajoling Tom and others in ways that can be alternately effective and incompetent. Myron is also memorable, a young dreamer who is navigating both the careful construction of a glider and a wholesome romance with Wanda. And Wanda is another live wire, whom Berg described, “She lives at home to save money for her dreams, not yet completely defined, which include stylish clothes.”
The village gossip and the expanding discoveries about the bones give the novel other layers of intrigue, as does a lurid history connected to the priest Father Cornelius Murphy. While Tom’s wife Sarah (with her reticence and her secrets) certainly is the emotional and moral locus of the novel, so many other characters contribute both curious theories and discoveries. Indeed, A Body To Bones is American Gothic as an entertaining ensemble play.
As a local resident explained about the increasingly disturbing revelations, “It’s been too gruesome around here lately. All the black humor.” Such is the nature of a novel that will grippingly propel forward right through to its satisfying conclusion. So I highly recommend you pick up A Body To Bones as much for the neighbors you get to visit as for the mystery they have to solve.
Yes, the presence of hidden bones in a factory provide intrigue that will carry the reader through the deftly crafted plot, but it is the immersion in the small-town of fifty years ago that makes the work such a pleasure. Berg knows how to develop characters. The shady lawyer George Windhurst is folksy hoot, constantly cajoling Tom and others in ways that can be alternately effective and incompetent. Myron is also memorable, a young dreamer who is navigating both the careful construction of a glider and a wholesome romance with Wanda. And Wanda is another live wire, whom Berg described, “She lives at home to save money for her dreams, not yet completely defined, which include stylish clothes.”
The village gossip and the expanding discoveries about the bones give the novel other layers of intrigue, as does a lurid history connected to the priest Father Cornelius Murphy. While Tom’s wife Sarah (with her reticence and her secrets) certainly is the emotional and moral locus of the novel, so many other characters contribute both curious theories and discoveries. Indeed, A Body To Bones is American Gothic as an entertaining ensemble play.
As a local resident explained about the increasingly disturbing revelations, “It’s been too gruesome around here lately. All the black humor.” Such is the nature of a novel that will grippingly propel forward right through to its satisfying conclusion. So I highly recommend you pick up A Body To Bones as much for the neighbors you get to visit as for the mystery they have to solve.
