Library Journal
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Etsy Beaucarne is a professor under pressure to publish more, thereby securing tenure. When a dayworker finds a 1912 manuscript written by Arthur Beaucarne, an unknown relative, she may have found a way. Arthur's journal tells of his life as a pastor while transcribing the account of Good Stab, a man from the Blackfoot Nation who says he is a vampire. These three distinct narrative voices are layered within the novel, and each voice contributes to a compelling story that draws readers forward, even as the terror increases. The horrors of historical atrocities are described while also bringing readers along in a deep exploration of identity, revenge, guilt, and the potential for hope. While this is a unique vampire story, it is also grief horror, portraying the mourning of a land and a people, inscribing profound sorrow for what was and what can never be again. VERDICT Jones (I Was A Teenage Slasher) holds up past atrocities and their impact into the future. Highly recommended for those who enjoy historical horror with family history, such as Andy Davidson's The Hollow Kind, or for those who loved the anthology Never Whistle at Night.—Lila Denning

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

ldquo;What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” So says Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire who roams the Montana prairie in 1912 looking for vengeance, to Lutheran minister Arthur Beaucarne, whom he visits each Sunday to give his confession. The book is told through the journals of Beaucarne—records of the minister’s own life but also Good Stab’s confessions—as read by the pastor’s great-great-granddaughter, Etsy, a hundred years later. Jones (I Was a Teenage Slasher, 2024) immediately immerses the reader in his harrowing world. Tracing the Marias Massacre of 1870 and recalling the atrocities inflicted on the buffalo and the Native people, the story charts the growing explicitness of each Good Stab confession, each one increasingly tense, violent, and accusatory, while Beaucarne begins to unravel and reveal his own horrific secrets, secrets that reach across time to Etsy. A riveting story of heartbreak, death, and revenge, this remarkable work of American fiction, a thought-provoking tale filled with existential terror, unease, and a high body count, transforms, in Jones’ deft hands, from the unapologetic horror novel it most certainly is into a critique of the entire idea of the United States—a critique that, despite the horrors, both real and supernatural, is forcefully infused with both heart and hope.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A professor unravels a mystery from the darkest depths of the Wild West. Salvation comes in strange and uncomfortable ways in this ambitious, century-spanning American gothic by Jones, drawing hard from this country’s deep well of trespasses against its Indigenous people. When 42-year-old junior professor Etsy Beaucarne is bequeathed a newly discovered, century-old diary composed by her great-great-great-grandfather Arthur Beaucarne, she thinks the Lutheran minister’s vivid tales about the frontier might finally earn her tenure at the University of Wyoming. As the framing device unfolds, we’re treated to two new narratives, the first being Arthur’s story of his ministry to a troubled Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab and the second being Good Stab’s own record of his long, strange life. “What I am is the Indian who can’t die,” he confesses. “I’m the worst dream America ever had.” Why it’s been such a long and memorable life quickly becomes apparent along with the Blackfeet’s extended teeth and thirst for blood. While a vampire Western could easily have become a farce, Jones crafts it into a rich tapestry that winds around questions of identity, heritage, and historical truth, all pivoting on a real historical atrocity, the Marias Massacre, where almost 200 Native people were murdered by the U.S. Army in January 1870. Jones never takes it easy on the reader but the trust he earns is rewarded in the end. Both Arthur’s and Good Stab’s accounts are authentically painted from their very disparate lives and cultures, so the shift can sometimes be jarring. It’s also a surprisingly slow burn for a tale with a truly visceral amount of carnage. Nevertheless, by the time the book winds back around, it’s as much an autopsy of institutionalized treachery as a demonization of its tragic and terrifying “villain.” A weirdly satisfying and bloody reckoning with some of America’s most shameful history. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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.)