What I am is the Indian who can’t die.
I’m the worst dream America ever had.
If you’re not already on the team, this is the book that’ll convince you that Stephen Graham Jones is the real deal.
I’ve only read a couple of his books, and I was hot and cold on them. The Only Good Indians felt full of promise. It was outstanding but didn’t stick the ending. I found My Heart is a Chainsaw pretty much unreadable, despite the largely positive press — too self-aware, too much slasher trivia from an unconvincing narrator. It convinced me Jones’s style just wasn’t my thing. I’m fairly picky when it comes to horror. I figured I was done with him.
This NPR review was what convinced me to give him another go. It checked all my boxes: gorgeous prose, complex plot, a basis in American history. Holy hell, am I glad I did. This book’s a thrilling, horrifying, eye-opening, brilliant gut-punch of a novel. It’s so striking I’m tempted to revisit Chainsaw and see if I missed something.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter kicks off in 2012 with Etsy Beaucarne, a professor digging into a crumbling diary her ancestor, a Lutheran pastor named Arthur, wrote in 1912. What she finds is his record of confessions from Good Stab, a Blackfeet man who’s… well, a vampire. Good Stab’s story stretches back to the 1870 Marias Massacre—200 Blackfeet, mostly women and kids, slaughtered by U.S. troops in Montana. It’s real history, and Jones doesn’t flinch. Good Stab’s bitten by the Cat Man, turned, and spends decades hunting the hunters who killed his people and the buffalo they lived on. He’s no hero; he’s a predator, feeding on friend and foe alike, his body twisting and morphing into whatever he drinks from—deer antlers, human whiskers, you name it. It’s gruesome, inventive, and flat-out terrifying.
What makes this book sing isn’t just the blood (though there’s plenty). It’s the way Jones braids history and horror into something that feels alive. It took a while to adjust to the storytelling format and differing voices, but after about a quarter of the book I was all-in. Arthur’s dry, preacherly voice clashes with Good Stab’s raw, aching rage, and the push-pull between them is electric. The prose is original and stunning. It’s complex, too, jumping timelines and perspectives, but it never loses you. This isn’t horror for cheap thrills; it’s a reckoning with genocide, loss, and what vengeance costs when you can’t die.
This, I believe, is the story of America, told in a forgotten church in the hinterlands, with a choir of the dead mutely witnessing.
I didn’t expect to love this. After Chainsaw, I thought Jones and I were quits. But The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a different beast—focused, haunting, and so good it’s got me rethinking his whole catalog. I’m ready to declare it a top fiction pick for 2025—it’s got weight, teeth, and a pulse. If you’re on the fence about Jones, this is the one.
Further Reading
Review in Chicago Review of Books
