Lengsfelder (Beautiful To The Bone) crafts a thrilling story about a woman haunted by her past who undertakes an incredible journey in order to save a young woman's life. Eunisโs albinism draws many looks from strangers, and she also has an uncanny connection with the weatherโand to rain in particular. That curious skill informs her work at the Weather One TV channel, who dispatches her to South Africa on an assignment that, for Eunis, is soon overshadowed by her discovery that the niece of her surrogate mother has been kidnapped and maimed in Tanzania. Circumstances separate Eunis from her workmates, so she decides to try and find the girl and help her.What follows is a crisply told seat-of-the-pants adventure with welcome environmental and humanitarian concerns. Eunis gets mixed up in the ramifications of the illegal timber trade flowing out of Tanzania and becomes reluctant allies with an enigmatic man named Mr. Ngowa. Though viewed as bad luck in most places, in Tanzania, she learns the shocking truth, ripped from real-world headlines, that people with albinism have been butchered for supernatural reasons. Lengsfelder introduces a host of inventive dangers (plane crash, sharks, deprivation, disease, and much more) as Eunis pursues the thinnest of threads in her search for the girlโand discovers her own power.
A Bounty of Bone keeps the reader off-balance with a series of jolting events, riding the edge between coincidence and the supernatural. The climax, which builds to near-Biblical proportions, is astonishing in its audacity and daring. While kept off-balance for most of the story, Eunis is far from a victim, and her ultimate triumph against a mysterious hunter called the Hyena is cleverly written. The result is an intense journey for both Eunis and the reader, as she sheds her reticence and fully embraces her true self for the first time, and the reader is treated to a visceral adventure.
Takeaway: Intricate mystery plotting and supernatural surprises make this Tanzanian adventure stand out.
Great for fans of: Minka Kentโs The Stillwater Girls, Christine Pride and Jo Piazzaโs We Are Not Like Them.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-
“A jaw-dropping suspense thriller unlike anything you’ve ever read . . .
. . . Unputdownable . . . in the tradition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, author PG Lengsfelder creates a journey that takes (his heroine) into truly dangerous geographic, physical, and psychological territory. . . Lengsfelder walks the blurry line between magic and reality in a number of hair-raising situations that may keep readers up long past their bedtime.”
“A great mix of thriller, magic, superstition, and adventure with the beautiful backdrop of Africa . . .
So begins a whirlwind . . . cross-African adventure to uncover the truth about (a young woman’s) whereabouts. . . Eunis is a tenacious character who doesn't give up, even when told to by everyone around her. There is a chorus of fantastic, colourful characters. A real page-turner of a book.”
