by Nicole Yurcaba
In Kayla Chenault’s debut novel These Bones, readers enter the Bramble Patch, a neighborhood where the Lyons family endures poverty, racism, and the ghoulish, cannibalistic horrors of the Barghest. Against this backdrop, readers also witness the Bramble Patch’s decay, and they, like the Bramble Patch’s residents, live on the fringes, in a community oppressed by the outlying power of rich, white, Southern folk unwilling to let society move forward, fearing that change means their demise. Hannah Ickes a Vanderbilt University undergraduate student, who worked with the City of Napoleonville Historical Society and discovered the home of Dr. W.E. Lyons-Harris, opens the novel with an inquisitive letter about the Bramble Patch’s past and legacy. From there, the Bramble Patch’s history unfolds as Wanhope Lyons discloses the horrors of life in the Bramble Patch, horrors that have lasted a lifetime.
Most notable about These Bones is its memorable characters. There’s ‘Livia, whose role in the novel reminds readers that our ancestors lie not so far in the past as her “fingertips and DNA remembered the seasonings for Port-Au-Prince, from a time when she was yet to be born” and whose body “remembered the malarial visions of her ancestors, passing between dream and reality as you might pass from the door to the porch back and forth on a hot June evening.” There’s the Barghest, the ghoulish, underworld kingpin, who “enjoyed the taste of skin and decadent fat and loved to suck the marrow dry” but who found “a man’s battered soul sweeter yet” and whose teeth not only gnaw the bones of his victims but also readers’ psyches.
Next, despite its historical setting, readers may find the novel’s parallels to contemporary issues such as racism and feminism noteworthy. With witty, but striking and unforgettable, lines like “A corset is an equalizer for lady and whore” combine with the focus on the female experience within the Bramble Patch. Thus, the novel becomes a powerful feminist force, one as strong as the literal and metaphorical rivers that sweep through the novel. This, combined with the focus on ancestry, creates a literary tour de force that reminds that history, like a river “takes nothing but what was hers first” and that history, like rivers, can be dredged and will “churn up blood-red mud and soon they will find all the tiny bones folks thought they were careful to hide.”
By the book’s end, readers find themselves fully immersed in not only the rivers of history and ancestry flowing through the book, but also the subtle philosophies in it that beg readers to pay attention: “’What’s flesh and bone and ash—this matter we are—is just stuff” and how “’we mustn’t pretend as if the differences between us are anything but fleeting atoms, bound for decay.’”Magical and poetic, These Bones possesses the brutality of the Southern gothic genre, the poesy of Jacqueline Bishop’s The River’s Song, and the elegant poesy of David Chariandy’s Soucouyant. The novel takes readers on historical and emotional journey, as well as a philosophical one that’s made even more significant by the book’s relevancy in the challenges currently facing America as it battles systemic racism and oppression. Fans of both historical fiction and the gothic will appreciate These Bones. It’s a page-turner that leaves readers enthralled, even long after they have finished reading the last page.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, is the recipient of a July 2020 Writing Residency at Gullkistan, Creative Center for the Arts in Iceland, and is a Tupelo Press June 2020 30 for 30 featured poet. Her poetry collection Triskaidekaphobia is forthcoming Black Spring Group in 2022. She teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and works as a career counselor for Blue Ridge Community College.
