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Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?
Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Three girls dead. Four missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.
Linda Emons brings the same high level of expertise to Reichs's 10th Temperance Brennan forensic thriller as its author does to the series. Both women understand instinctively that simply rattling off details of DNA matches and other scientific data isn't enough: it's making listeners believe in the people collecting that data. The cold case of a missing Quebec girl becomes a very personal quest for Brennan when she discovers that the bones in question probably belong to a childhood friend-a figure of fascination and sophistication who suddenly disappeared from Brennan's life at the age of 15. Emons brings both Tempe and her friend Évangéline Landry to vivid life. She's equally good in briefer scenes with Brennan's lover, Ryan, who investigates the dead girl's link to a predator who might still be active. Reichs, who might be the legitimate heiress to Patricia Cornwell's throne, has a winning partnership with Emons. Simultaneous release with the Scribner hardcover (Reviews, June 4). (Sept.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationBabies die. People vanish. People die. Babies vanish.
I was hammered early by those truths. Sure, I had a kid's understanding that mortal life ends. At school, the nuns talked of heaven, purgatory, limbo, and hell. I knew my elders would "pass." That's how my family skirted the subject. People passed. Went to be with God. Rested in peace. So I accepted, in some ill-formed way, that earthly life was temporary. Nevertheless, the deaths of my father and baby brother slammed me hard.
And Évangéline Landry's disappearance simply had no explanation.
But I jump ahead.
It happened like this.
As a little girl, I lived on Chicago's South Side, in the less fashionable outer spiral of a neighborhood called Beverly. Developed as a country retreat for the city's elite following the Great Fire of 1871, the hood featured wide lawns and large elms, and Irish Catholic clans whose family trees had more branches than the elms. A bit down-at-the-heels then, Beverly would later be gentrified by boomers seeking greenery within proximity of the Loop.
A farmhouse by birth, our home predated all its neighbors. Green-shuttered white frame, it had a wraparound porch, an old pump in back, and a garage that once housed horses and cows.
My memories of that time and place are happy. In cold weather, neighborhood kids skated on a rink created with garden hoses on an empty lot. Daddy would steady me on my double blades, clean slush from my snowsuit when I took a header. In summer, we played kick ball, tag, or Red Rover in the street. My sister, Harry, and I trapped fireflies in jars with hole-punched lids.
During the endless Midwestern winters, countless Brennan aunts and uncles gathered for cards in our eclectically shabby parlor. The routine never varied. After supper, Mama would take small tables from the hall closet, dust the tops, and unfold the legs. Harry would drape the white linen cloths, and I would center the decks, napkins, and peanut bowls.
With the arrival of spring, card tables were abandoned for front porch rockers, and conversation replaced canasta and bridge. I didn't understand much of it. Warren Commission. Gulf of Tonkin. Khrushchev. Kosygin. I didn't care. The banding together of those bearing my own double helices assured me of well-being, like the rattle of coins in the Beverly Hillbillies bank on my bedroom dresser. The world was predictable, peopled with relatives, teachers, kids like me from households similar to mine. Life was St. Margaret's school, Brownie Scouts, Mass on Sunday, day camp in summer.
Then Kevin died, and my six-year-old universe fragmented into shards of doubt and uncertainty. In my sense of world order, death took the old, great-aunts with gnarled blue veins and translucent skin. Not baby boys with fat red cheeks.
I recall little of Kevin's illness. Less of his funeral. Harry fidgeting in the pew beside me. A spot on my black patent leather shoe. From what? It seemed important to know. I stared at the small gray splotch. Stared away from the reality unfolding around me.
The family gathered, of course, voices hushed, faces wooden. Mama's side came from North Carolina. Neighbors. Parishioners. Men from Daddy's law firm. Strangers. They stroked my head. Mumbled of heaven and angels.
The house overflowed with casseroles and bakery wrapped in tinfoil and plastic. Normally, I loved sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not for the tuna or egg salad between the bread. For the sheer decadence of that frivolous waste. Not that day. Never since. Funny the things that affect you.
Kevin's death changed more than my view of sandwiches. It altered the whole stage on which I'd lived my life. My mother's eyes, always kind and often mirthful, were perpetually wrong. Dark-circled and deep in their sockets. My child's brain was unable to translate her look, other than to sense sadness. Years later I saw a photo of a Kosovo woman, her husband and son lying in makeshift coffins. I felt a spark of recollection. Could I know her? Impossible. Then realization. I was recognizing the same defeat and hopelessness I'd seen in Mama's gaze.
But it wasn't just Mama's appearance that changed. She and Daddy no longer shared a pre-supper cocktail, or lingered at the table talking over coffee. They no longer watched television when the dishes were cleared and Harry and I were in our PJs. They'd enjoyed the comedy shows, eyes meeting when Lucy or Gomer did something amusing. Daddy would take Mama's hand and they'd laugh.
All laughter fled when leukemia conquered Kevin.
My father also took flight. He didn't withdraw into quiet self-pity, as Mama eventually did. Michael Terrence Brennan, litigator, connoisseur, and irrepressible bon vivant, withdrew directly into a bottle of good Irish whiskey. Many bottles, actually.
I didn't notice Daddy's absences at first. Like a pain that builds so gradually you're unable to pinpoint its origin, I realized one day that Daddy just wasn't around that much. Dinners without him grew more frequent. His arrival home grew later, until he seemed little more than a phantom presence in my life. Some nights I'd hear unsteady footfalls on the steps, a door banged too hard against a wall. A toilet flushed. Then silence. Or muffled voices from my parents' bedroom, the cadence conveying accusations and resentment.
To this day, a phone ringing after midnight makes me shiver. Perhaps I am an alarmist. Or merely a realist. In my experience, late-night calls never bring good news. There's been an accident. An arrest. A fight.
Mama's call came a long eighteen months after Kevin's death. Phones gave honest rings back then. Not polyphonic clips of "Grillz" or "Sukie in the Graveyard." I awoke at the first resonating peal. Heard a second. A fragment of a third. Then a soft sound, half scream, half moan, then the clunk of a receiver striking wood. Frightened, I pulled the covers up to my eyes. No one came to my bed.
There was an accident, Mama said the next day. Daddy's car was forced off the road. She never spoke of the police report, the blood alcohol level of 0.27. I overheard those details on my own. Eavesdropping is instinctual at age seven.
I remember Daddy's funeral even less than I remember Kevin's. A bronze coffin topped with a spray of white flowers. Endless eulogies. Muffled crying. Mama supported by two of the aunts. Psychotically green cemetery grass.
Mama's relatives made the trek in even larger numbers this time. Daessees. Lees. Cousins whose names I didn't remember. More covert listening revealed threads of their plan. Mama must move back home with her children.
The summer after Daddy died was one of the hottest in Illinois history, with temperatures holding in the nineties for weeks. Though weather forecasters talked of Lake Michigan's cooling effect, we were far from the water, blocked by too many buildings and too much cement. No lacustrine breezes for us. In Beverly, we plugged in fans, opened windows, and sweated. Harry and I slept on cots on the screened porch.
Through June and into July, Grandma Lee maintained a "return to Dixie" phone campaign. Brennan relatives continued appearing at the house, but solo now, or in sets of two, men with sweat-looped armpits, women in cotton dresses limp on their bodies. Conversation was guarded, Mama nervous and always on the verge of tears. An aunt or uncle would pat her hand. Do what's best for you and the girls, Daisy.
In some child's way I sensed a new restlessness in these familial calls. A growing impatience that grieving end and life resume. The visits had become vigils, uncomfortable but obligatory because Michael Terrence had been one of their own, and the matter of the widow and the children needed to be settled in proper fashion.
Death also wrought change in my own social nexus. Kids I'd known all my life avoided me now. When chance brought us together they'd stare at their feet. Embarrassed? Confused? Fearful of contamination? Most found it easier to stay away.
Mama hadn't enrolled us in day camp, so Harry and I spent the long, steamy days by ourselves. I read her stories. We played board games, choreographed puppet shows, or walked to the Woolworth's on Ninety-fifth Street for comics and vanilla Cokes.
Throughout those weeks, a small pharmacy took shape on Mama's bedside table. When she was downstairs I'd examine the little vials with their ridged white caps and neatly typed labels. Shake them. Peer through the yellow and brown plastic. The tiny capsules caused something to flutter in my chest.
Mama made her decision in mid-July. Or perhaps Grandma Lee made it for her. I listened as she told Daddy's brothers and sisters. They patted her hand. Perhaps it's best, they said, sounding, what? Relieved? What does a seven-year-old know of nuance?
Gran arrived the same day a sign went up in our yard. In the kaleidoscope of my memory I see her exiting the taxi, an old woman, scarecrow thin, hands knobby and lizard dry. She was fifty-six that summer.
Within a week we were packed into the Chrysler Newport that Daddy had purchased before Kevin's diagnosis. Gran drove. Mama rode shotgun. Harry and I were in back, a midline barrier of crayons and games demarcating territorial boundaries.
Two days later we arrived at Gran's house in Charlotte. Harry and I were given the upstairs bedroom with the green-striped wallpaper. The closet smelled of mothballs and lavender. Harry and I watched Mama hang our dresses on rods. Winter dresses for parties and church.
How long are we staying, Mama?
We'll see. The hangers clicked softly.
Will we go to school here?
We'll see.
At breakfast the next morning Gran asked if we'd like to spend the rest of the summer at the beach. Harry and I gazed at her over our Rice Krispies, shell-shocked by the thundering changes rolling over our lives.
'Course you would, she said.
How do you know what I would or wouldn't like? I thought. You're not me. She was right, of course. Gran usually was. But that wasn't the point. Another decision had been made and I was powerless to change it.
Two days after hitting Charlotte, our little party again settled itself in the Chrysler, Gran at the wheel. Mama slept, waking only when the whining of our tires announced we were crossing the causeway.
Mama's head rose from the seat back. She didn't turn to us. Didn't smile and sing out, "Pawleys Island, here we come!" as she had in happier times. She merely slumped back.
Gran patted Mama's hand, a carbon copy of the gesture employed by the Brennans. "We're going to be fine," she cooed, in a drawl identical to that of her daughter. "Trust me, Daisy darlin'. We're going to be fine."
And fine I was, once I met Évangéline Landry.
And for the next four years.
Until Évangéline vanished.
Copyright © 2007 by Temperance Brennan, L.P.
ldailey
Posted October 22, 2008
This book is almost impossible to put down! There are so many twists and turns, yet it is extremely easy to follow! I recommend this to anyone who enjoys the shows CSI or Bones! I also Recommend the entire Tempe Brennan series by Kathy Reichs... they are all amazing! Best of all, you dont have to read them in order to enjoy the book, yes they give you more details if you read them in order, but they also stand alone very well!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 23, 2008
Dr. Reichs gave me an insight into a culture I had only heard of, but knew little about, the Acadiens of New Brunswick. As a French speaker myself, I liked the occasional use of the 'Chiac' dialect, which looks little like French. FROM BONES TO ASHES offered gripping suspense from the beginning to the end. The book successfully weaves the story of unidentified dead girls with missing persons, Dr. Brennan's long lost childhood friend from the Acadie region of Canada, and the stigma of a now treatable disease into a moving read. I would highly reccommend this book to fans of history, anthropology, forensic science, and mystery.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 21, 2007
I can't believe the author could write such dribble. The story is weak. I think she had a contract to whip out a book, and that's what she did with no thought of her readers who pay good money for her books. I feel cheated and angry. I have been a fan for years, but no more. I would be reluctant to purchase her next book. Has she made her money and now just does not care? If you want to read all the action in this book, just read the last few pages. Skip all the whining.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 29, 2007
This story line was good and it was something that I had never read about in a novel before but I was disappointed with the ending of the book. It leaves Tempe's personal life turned upside down and it gives you nothing to anticipate, after reading Break No Bones I was hoping this novel would shed some light on things but it didn't and actually just left her life more screwed up then what it was.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 11, 2007
Ms. Reichs included pages of mind numbing details that had nothing to do with the plot or character development. Speaking of the plot, it was the most ridiculous, convoluted, unbelievable mish-mash I've ever read. It was as if the author had a dozen pieces of nonsense rattling around in her brain, and then just squished them all together and called it an ending. My husband bought the book for me because I enjoy the television series 'Bones,' and I kept reading even though it was a dreadful disappointment. I wasted my time he wasted his money.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan needs a diversion as her love life seems to be collapsing with her relationship with Detective Andrew Ryan, shaky at its optimistic best. Thus, when she is asked to look at the remains of a cold case in New Brunswick, Canada, she leaps at the opportunity. The skeleton is that of a a teenage girl, which leads Tempe to believe that the bones are the remains of Evangeline Landry. Three decades ago when Tempe was eight, her fifteen year old friend Evangeline vanished without a trace. Looking back Tempe vaguely remembers being told to forget Evangeline ever lived.--------------- As she recalls the warning from her youth, Tempe wonders what caused the lesions on the bone structure. At the same time Ryan investigates three cold cases involving missing teenage girls eventually found dead with the same scenario as that of the Jane Doe that Tempe feels is Evangeline. Both think their cases are the result of the same serial killer and share the fear factor that this predator still operates freely after all these years. ------------- Tempe¿s tenth forensic whodunit is a superb investigative thriller that hooks the audience from the first moment that the heroine begins her inquiry. The fast-paced story line is action-packed with the two subplots tied together as much by the investigations as it is the relationship. No one plays with Bones better than Kathy Reichs does as the latest Temperance Brennan cold case mysteries retains the series trademark of fresh suspense enhanced by the latest forensic breakthroughs.-------------- Harriet Klausner
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 21, 2011
I recommend starting with Deja Dead and reading straight on through! You won't regret it!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.TopDown
Posted March 17, 2010
I bought this book because my girlfriend is a HUGE fan of forensic mystery and reads all Cornwell's books less than a week after they are out. She loves the TV show "Bones" and this is part of the "Temperance Series". (The 10th I've learned- but my first.)
My Girlfriend was sick in bed this past weekend and so I read it to her between her "naps". She at first could not stop interupting me because the personalities in the book were different than the charactor on the TV show. (I don't watch the show and was enjoying the story just fine!)
It didn't long once the plot started to move that I noticed I was reading to a rapt audience and I felt 'cheated' when she would doze off and I would have to stop reading.
This book is grabbing enough that you can easily read it in one sitting (just make sure you have a the day free of interuption if you are the type), but has such short chapters that you can also let the story tease you along with quick reads here and there through the day.
(Or if your the type that tries to read before bed and can't get past 5 pages.)
My next trip to the bookstore to "stock up" on Spring & Summer outdoor reads is going to include AT LEAST a few more Bones books and to get aquainted with K. Reichs award winners.
Noticer
Posted November 12, 2009
Totally enjoyed this book and would recoomend to anyone who isn't familiar with the human body so that they will get an understanding of the bones of the body and some knowledge of biology.
Enjoy medical fiction as the general public has a lot of learn in this area and would recommend to everyone.
The book will definitely stand by itself, but is a welcome continuance of the Brennan series. Hard to put down, this book continues to deal with the hard science of forensic anthropology in a enjoyable and entertaining manner with some nice sidebars. Although I mark it for escapism, it is intellectually stimulating.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.MountainView
Posted December 9, 2008
Bones to Ashes was a great book. It was filled with mysteries, action, and cliff hangers. My favorite part of the book would have to be the fact that every chapter, every paragraph was filled with interesting clues to help the reader determine the mystery of the story.
The book was about a girl named Temp. When she was a child, her best friend, Evangeline was kidnapped. She spent years looking for her friend but later gave up. As an adult she became an anthropologist, a person who studies human beings. When one of her colleagues came upon some bones which in turn could belong to Evangeline, Temp spends many days studying the bones. She comes up with nothing connecting those bones to Evangeline. Temp puts many weeks into studying these bones and realizes that they may be connected to Evangeline some how. Later, she finds out that many other girls, like Evangeline, were kidnapped and taken to where Evangeline may be. One girl speaks out, telling Temp how she and the other girls were used for inappropriate videos. If so, where is Evangeline?
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cliff hangers and loves mysteries. This book would probably be best for people over the age of ten due to some content. The most important thing about this book is the reader has to like to read or else the book will become boring, due to the fact that there are almost 400 pages in the book.
Anonymous
Posted May 11, 2008
I've not read any of Reich's novels, but was intrigued by this storyline. I was excited to start this book, however, became disappointed very quickly. I found the writing style to not flow well and be very distracting. Needless to say, I didn't finish the book....
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted October 18, 2007
its one of the most disapointing books that she has written..will not buy another ..i liked the romance between tempe an ryan
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Posted August 4, 2007
A brother's murder led to Acadia Kathy Reichs new novel flowed from sisters' resolve to get an autopsy July 28, 2007 Aloma Jardine The Hamilton Spectator MONCTON, N.B. (Jul 28, 2007) Temperance Brennan normally sticks to solving cases in Montreal and North Carolina, but the forensic anthropologist's career has also taken her to Guatemala and Israel. In her next adventure, Tempe Brennan, the fictional heroine of author and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs' bestselling series of novels, will travel even farther off the beaten path. Tempe is heading to New Brunswick. In Bones to Ashes, the discovery of the skeleton of a young girl in New Brunswick brings Temperance back to her childhood as she is reminded of the disappearance of her young Acadian friend Evangeline. The story of how Reichs came to write a novel based in New Brunswick would make a bestseller itself. It began with a murder 26 years ago this month. In 1981, New Brunswick missionary Raoul Leger was serving in Guatemala in the midst of the country's bloody civil war. When he was killed in July of that year, the Guatemalan government said he died with a group of guerrillas who committed suicide rather than surrender. His body was repatriated to Canada several months later. But Leger's family never bought the official version of events and in 2001 his sisters Andra and Clola Leger were invited by a National Film Board crew to visit Guatemala to try to unravel the mystery surrounding his death. Andra Leger says that trip made them realize how important it was that they had their brother's body. Many of the estimated 200,000 people killed during the civil war simply disappeared. They also realized Raoul's body may help bring justice by providing evidence of war crimes. 'I foolishly thought it was as simple as calling the Moncton Hospital and asking for an autopsy,' Leger says, smiling as she recalls how complex the whole process was. Leger was finally told an autopsy on a 20-year-old body required the expertise of a forensic anthropologist and the only one east of Montreal was Kathy Reichs. Leger had no idea Reichs was famous. She had no idea she was even an author. She knew only this woman might be able to give her family some answers and help them close a painful chapter in their lives. 'I bugged her every day,' she says, explaining how she sent e-mail after e-mail asking for help in navigating the red tape involved in getting her brother's body exhumed and transported to Montreal to a facility equipped to handle the autopsy. Reichs patiently answered each e-mail, rerouting Leger to the proper people. The two finally met in Montreal in December 2001 when the autopsy was performed. As they said goodbye, Reichs made a quip about not getting five or six e-mails a day anymore. 'Are you going to miss me?' Leger asked. 'Maybe,' Reichs replied, and so the two women continued to e-mail each other, Reichs from wherever in the world her work happened to take her, Leger from her quiet home in Cocagne, about 30 kilometres northeast of Moncton. Reichs, who speaks French fluently, had been fascinated with the Legers' Acadian accent when they met in Montreal. Leger says, 'Then last February she sends me an e-mail -- hers are always one-liners -- 'What do you think if my next book is based in New Brunswick?'' Leger started sending Reichs bits and pieces of New Brunswick and Acadian history -- the deportation in 1755, rum running off the coast, the leprosy hospital in Tracadie -- and Reichs made plans for a visit. If Reichs wanted to see Acadie and Acadians as they are, she couldn't have picked a better guide. As Leger recounts Reichs' adventures in the province, her hands stay busy cutting up strawberries in the kitchen of her century-old farmhouse. 'Basically we shared our life with her as we live it -- no fuss, no muss,' she says. Leger has never been star struck around Reichs. By the time
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Posted September 16, 2007
I've enjoyed Kathy Reichs' books in the past, but this one really kept me on the edge of my seat. The plot was different than anything I've read before, and the ending brought everything togehter. I look forward to reading the next book to get some resolution on Tempe's personal life.....
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Overview
Temperance Brennan, like her creator Kathy Reichs, is a brilliant, sexy forensic anthropologist called on to solve the toughest cases. But for Tempe, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another assignment. Évangéline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, Évangéline was the most exotic person in Tempe's eight-year-old world. When Évangéline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous."
Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many ...