The Only Good Indians: Horror That Understands Its Ghosts

Stephen Graham Jones has described The Only Good Indians as his attempt to write "the great Native American horror novel." Whether it achieves that impossible goal is subjective, but what's certain is that it's one of the most powerful, original horror novels of the past decade.

The setup is almost classical in its simplicity: four young men killed something they shouldn't have, and now something is coming for them. But Jones complicates this framework in fascinating ways. The entity pursuing them—Elk Head Woman—isn't a simple revenge monster. She's patient, intelligent, and capable of wearing other faces. The horror isn't just physical; it's psychological, cultural, spiritual.

Jones writes Native characters who exist between worlds—not quite traditional enough for the reservation, not quite assimilated enough for white America. Their guilt over the elk hunt becomes metaphor for larger losses, for ways they've tried to escape their heritage only to have it pursue them.

The prose is hypnotic and strange, slipping between perspectives in disorienting ways that mirror the entity's nature. When violence erupts—and it does, spectacularly—it's both shocking and earned. The basketball game sequence in particular is a masterpiece of tension and release.