Bone Game: a novel by Louis Owens is a story that is based on a mixed-blood Professor called Cole McCurtain. He teaches Indian studies at Santa Cruz in California. McCurtain is divorced and desperate. He no longer enjoys teaching. McCurtain is always drunk, eats little and misses his daughter who stays with his divorced wife. He is attempting to make a new life and trying to come to terms with his mixed heritage. However, he cannot sleep well because he is often haunted by images of a strange and wicked gambler. McCurtain wonders whether the gambler is a real person, the ghost or an incarnation of the gamester of American Indian mythology.
McCurtain’s becomes dramatically bad after he discovers that female students are murdered around campus. An old medicine woman in Mississippi also starts having the same nightmares as McCurtain. The murders continue but he is not shaken until his daughter, Abby becomes a possible target. The aged woman together with Cole’s father as well as his ancient great uncle set out for California because they know McCurtain and his daughter are in danger and need help.
McCurtain, his daughter, his relatives, and a friend called Alex, a transvestite Navajo confront an old evil force that they believe was unleashed by Spanish missionaries’ unkind treatment of Indian Americans. The author increases the bounds of mystery genre by blending it with the folklore of Native Americans to create an exclusive novel of mystery, intrigues, fantasy, and suspense. Ultimately, the tale is narrated with a great sense of humor.
