Return of the Bones - Softcover

Garcia, Belinda Vasquez; Austin, Belinda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1475187424 ISBN 13: 9781475187427

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Writing this book and doing the extensive research was special to the author since she herself is 28% Native American Pueblo Indian and has many Native American friends, some whom were her playmates and schoolmates.WINNER NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA BOOK AWARDS! A Story in NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY very few are familiar with. A dazzling, family epic of love and forgiveness.In 1915 at the age of thirteen, Grandfather witnessed the desecration of the graves of his ancestors: 2,067 skeletons were stolen from the ghost Pueblo of Pecos. During the dark history of his peoples, their bones were more valuable than their lives. As he watched the remains of his ancestors driven away in trucks, he thought, bury my heart in their wounded graves, and fell to his knee, stricken with fear. Grandfather kept his secret for 84 years because he was afraid the men who dug up his family might come for him, too. In present day, he is an ancient ruin with one fist in a grave and the other in a wine bottle. He pleads with his granddaughter to drive him from New Mexico to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Boston, Massachusetts and bring home the missing ones.Hollow-Woman doesn't care about family trees, genealogy, or shared DNA. She works at a Native American casino and is of the modern ways, but she reluctantly agrees to drive the old buzzard cross country on his quest to rebury the ancestors at the rubble of their family pueblo. Grandfather claims the rest of the dead family hasn't had a night of peace since the others were ripped from their graves.Grandfather is a powerful shaman who believes his granddaughter does not appreciate heritage or the ancestry of her blood. He fashions a magical dream catcher that sometimes hurls her into the past to experience the lives of six centuries of generations, their sorrows, triumphs, and the dark side of the religious fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition. During their road trip to find their stolen ancestors, she embarks on a spiritual journey and truly comes to appreciate the ties that bind the past and present of families.They discover what the Pecos skeletons have been up to for eight decades since being held captive at Harvard University, and how important their bones are to mankind

About this title

From the Author:

Return of the Bones, in manuscript form, was a finalist in the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards.
I was doing historical research on the New Mexico Pueblos' Legend of Montezuma for my series entitled Land of Enchantment Trilogy, when I stumbled upon the story about the Pecos skeletons in the Harvard Gazette. I was so moved by their ordeal, that Return of the Bones is the result.
Did you know these skeletons were used in the  Landmark Osteoporosis Studies that proved exercise strengthens bones? The desecration of their graves was, also, the beginning of American Archaeology.

From the Back Cover:

Grandfather reveals as a boy he ran after the trucks carrying the bones, skulls hanging out of windows, eye sockets hollow, until he stumbled and the rumble of tires carried the bones far away.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1475187424
• ISBN 13: 9781475187427
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244