In The Ozarks, The Monster Is Always Outside

Ginny Myers Sain Perpetuates Ozarks Blame Of Them City Folk

When The Bones Sing, I have written elsewhere, is a cultural signifier. It’s written by Ginny Myers Sain, formerly of Oklahoma, and before that, formerly of Arkansas, but now of Florida.

Why does that matter, where Ginny Myers Sain is from? In the moral vision written by Sain, if you’re not from around these here parts, with an over the top vernacular that comes on strong at the begining but fades by chapter 5, you ought to be a prime suspect.

Ginny Myers Sain is not from Florida, so Floridians, I’m warning you. Look out! Someone traveled to your community? They must be dangerous!

SPOILER ALERT!

Look, I don’t really believe that outsiders are a bunch of bloodthirsty killers, criminal derelicts with sick and twisted kinks who prey upon the innocent, tormented locals. That, however, seems to be the upshot of When The Bones Sing.

The bad guy in this murder mystery is an Ozarks local who turns his back on his neighbors to bring in wealthy people from outside the Ozarks who come to the Ozarks for no other purpose than to hunt down the good people of the hill country and kill them for pleasure.

It’s a plot that suits the sensibilities of Ozarks insiders who suppose that everyone from outside the Ozarks is some kind of demonic cultist sicko who probably drinks hazelnut latte or something.

Nobody in the Ozarks is responsible for anything. It’s all those city people who are to blame! Throw them off the cliff!

We can do better than this. But, I’ll give this book a nod, at least for not pinning the murders on the Ozark Howler. The Ozark Howler is, in When The Bones Sing, scary and haunting, but not guilty.