The Cry of Dry Bones was an interesting read. It tells the story of a child in a fictional tribe in Ethiopia who is at the cusp of becoming a man. He's a gentle soul who wishes life weren't so cruel. His mother is depressed. His father is a great warrior and hunter. His uncle is a drunk. His best friend's older brother is killed in a botched attempt at vengeance. Losing someone he was close to and watching the impact on his best friend and his mother pushes Tesfahun over the edge. Events that follow are intense, with Tesfahun's survival at stake. Along the way he faces difficult choices, observes terrible acts, and does what it takes to survive, all while seeking an identity he could live with.

The book is based on current tribal practices.

I enjoyed the writing story. I was able to sit in the character's head and feel what he feels. I am a person that gets stuck on details and the "believability" of a book. If I look past that I see a well written story about a character I was invested in.

Mentioned in the author notes we learn more of his exposure to issues in this book. My next goal is to watch the documentary Omo Child: The River and the Bush. The author mentions it specifically and I got the impression that it served as character inspiration.

I received an early review copy (ERC) through LibraryThing. I am hopeful an editor corrected the handful of grammar errors I noted in the ERC edition. That is my only hard critique. My soft critique is that there is religious influence in the book and I worry how that may warp the book's voice. ( )

Cry of Dry Bones by NT McQueen (LibraryThing doesn't allow formatting such as italics which are needed to review this book)

This is a story of an African tribe called the Akara of the Omo River Valley in southern Ethiopia. In particular, the protangonist is a boy named Tesfahun. Tesfahun's father, Kelile, is The Great Warrior of the tribe indicated by the number scars up and down his body. In order to become a man of the Akara, one had to endure numerous wars with the Kangatum and other Omo Valley tribes showing the scars to prove it. Not only that but practice fights with fellow Akara tribe members produce many of the early scars. Tesfahun notices the scarred lines of his father, "feeling naked with his smooth body free of scars and paint".

Dawit, Tesfahun's best friend, has an elder brother, Dunga, who regularly engages Dawit in real, bloodletting fights, from which Dunga emerges unscathed. Later, Dunga is killed when he ventures out alone which the Akara automatically think was the work of the Kangatum. It now becomes Dawit's duty to avenge the death at which Tesfahun questions "more blood?". Tesfahun's thinking is decidedly not in the Akara tradition.

McQueen's writing style is puzzling. He does not use quotes which makes for difficult reading. The reader is left to guess which lines are spoken. I frequently was reading along only to realize a line was actually a quote so I had to go back and re-read the sentence to gain proper context.

The misuse of words by a published author is disheartening. For instance: The fruit "fumbled" its way down his throat; shadows crashed and "scuttled" around him; in the "nook" of his arm; darkness "rattled"; he "eclipsed" between thought and dream; he hunched like some grotesque "homunculus"; he "clashed" two rocks together; the man who "gazed forlorn" (adj used for adv) same for "chewing slow".

Even more disturbing is the abrupt introduction of new italicized words with no explanation. One soon discovers one has to remember these words which are eventually explained in the following text, sometimes several pages later. This makes reading and understanding difficult because the explanations are not necessarily referred back to the italicised word. For instance Tessie asks his father "Why don't I have a wändam?"... It is maddening not to know the meaning of wändam at the time. One has to piece the story together learning later that Tesfahun is a "lone offspring" and is curious about not having a brother. Why make us wait?

About 6% through the book we are introduced to the italicized word mingi as in "mingi children". Tesfahun knows only the word so he is naturally curious. Apparently Dawit knows what it means because at one point he says to Tesfahun "Don't talk about it". His mother says "They are mingi so we should not be concerned". It isn't until much later that we learn the true story of the mingi. It is so much later that I felt cheated that I didn't know what it meant at first and what the title of the book really means (dry bones). Finally Ogbay, Tessie's uncle reveals the truth about mingi. Tesfahun had a twin brother who was unwanted so sacrificed, consigned to the valley of the bones. Kelile killed his son with his own hands.

White people area introduced early on. Their mortal enemies Kangatum have been infiltrated by Christian missionaries who have given them guns. The first time the people with pale lips visit the Akara they arrive, Tesfahun muses, "seated atop a large object with black, round hoops". The whites had little boxes which they pointed toward the members of the tribe. Yes, white tourists are escorted around the valley by the Kangatum to take pictures of the natives. Oh what fun but the Akara are having none of it. The Great Warrior menaces them at which they beat a hasty retreat.

After learning of the horror of killing newborn children, Tesfahun interferes in a mingi ceremony, killing one of three kings of the Akara. He has to flee which is the end of Part 1. Tesfahun goes on to adventures alone in the wild. Curiously, the Akara don't pursue him as one would think they would. Eventually he is taken in by Christian missionaries who rename him "Moses".

Moses is subjected to the constant lies of the Christian preacher, always with reference to the Akara. Actually, to know the history of Christianity is to know about people as savage as the peoples of the Omo Valley. Talking to a woman of the Christian camp, Moses asks "You say this Jesus was the son of your god yet he sent him to this tree to die?" "Yes", she replies. "Why?" he asks. "Love", she says. The more Tesfahun studies the Bible, the more parallels he finds with his own Akara life.

One can't avoid the nagging feeling that Tesfahun's thoughts are written by a white author with European-American thinking. For instance, Tesfahun thinks "I am cursed. The useless son. The brother who survived and who brings shame on his family. The one who escaped the Valley and the river. I am the lost boy. The one who fails. The drifter who belongs to no tribe or no god. Nothing. The coward who pierces the heart of the old man who saved him. A rogue into the wildnerss. The spiller of blood. The one who stalks the land and pursues tribes like a lion. No, a jackal. The one who kills to kill. The soulless warrior. The portrait of the damned. This is who I am and, even as this Moses, I will still be Tesfahun...I will always be mingi". Whew!

Cry of the Dry Bones gives insight into African tribes and their practices so is of value in understanding the world and increasing your worldview. It's just that one would have hoped it could have been written in a better style. You can hear of other people’s practices but that doesn't make you an expert African historian. ( )

Based on a true story, The Cry of Dry Bones is the tale of an adolescent boy approaching manhood among an isolated tribe in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. As well as its anthropological significance, Cry might belong up there with other male coming-of-age angst classics like Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or even Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. But the most remarkable deficit will hold it back: the powerful need for a good copy editor! Though his characters are well drawn and believable, McQueen’s punctuation style, perhaps meant to encourage the reader to place emphasis where the author intends, is instead a jarring interruption. I frequently read two or three sentences over and over—and over and over and over—in an effort to discover what has been left out, only to discover that a comma or two in place of a period is all it would take to resolve the confusion.

On page 11, I find: “Above the heads of the children, he stared at the large object. Seated atop black, round hoops and growling. Shining and solid but like a box unbreakable.” I read it over and over, trying to figure out what may have been left out, before I realize that it was not a series of incomplete thoughts, but a series of misplaced periods. This same misguided device appears over and over throughout the narrative. Occasionally, though, it works, as on page 48: “Tesfahun imagined only rancor etched in those eyes, those lips, those bat-like ears. A trio of false clairvoyants.” The device is easily apparent here, but could have just as effectively been expressed with an em dash.

The overabundance of periods, however, is equaled, if not surpassed, by the paucity of much-needed quotation marks. It is unclear where narrative ends and conversation begins, resulting in confusion over which character is speaking. In the final chapter, I sigh with relief when quotation marks suddenly appear. But alas! Therein lies another puzzle of inconsistency. All characters’ dialog, except the protagonist, are in quotation marks. I have read two pages before I notice that what I had assumed was narration is actually the protagonist’s dialog.

Confusing creative punctuation is not the only problem. Typos run rampant throughout: taught instead of taut, drams instead of dreams, lead instead of led, beside instead of bedside, lung instead of lunge. There are too many to list—and way too many instances of the use of further when it should be farther. I became so accustomed to that misuse that I was startled when I came across a single example of farther used correctly.

Perhaps many of these problems were due to a rush to press, foregoing a final read-through, which spawned another frequent eyesore. What appear to be vestiges of edits are left dangling behind to distract the reader: “He took the it and raised his eyes.” Was the intention to add something after the and delete it, or was it an incomplete deletion, leaving the behind when it, too, should have been deleted? Two appear in the same paragraph on page 48: “He attempted to force his mind to remember times with Dunga but only his thoughts only called upon the Demissie the Destroyer. . . . He poured his blame into that it.” These are only a few of the many instances that appear to be incomplete edits.

After reading that McQueen teaches writing, I wonder if his work is a compendium of exercises and experiments in literary device. Why else the chaotic punctuation, one-sentence paragraphs, short sentences with no verbs, and one sentence that meanders along for 341 words? Had I not committed to read and review The Cry of Dry Bones, I would never have bothered to read past the first 50 pages. The chore of wading through the distractions of so many textual errors caused me to repeatedly set it aside, then force myself to resume reading. And at last, I am glad that I was forced to persist.

In the final analysis, The Cry of Dry Bones is engaging storytelling, with an ending containing both surprise and eternal wisdom. The author’s remarkable lyrical prose aspires to brilliance—and damned near succeeds, but not quite. On the same page, the writing varies from brilliant to lyrical to confused and trying. I am disturbed by the notion that such promising prose and elegant storytelling may fade into obscurity for lack of a good edit. ( )

I received a paperback copy of this book as an Early Reviewer. I found myself unmotivated to finish the book after about 100 pages, for a few reasons. As other reviewers mentioned, the editing is abysmal. I also don't enjoy the style choice of not including quotation marks around verbal communication, either. I found what I did read of the book confusing and a little meandering. Perhaps I didn't give the story enough time to evolve. Perhaps I'm not the right audience for this book. ( )

Review: The Cry of Dry Bones by N. T. McQueen 3* 08/25/2023
I enjoyed This Early Reviewer Book even though it needed some editing. The story is about a young teen who lives in Ethiopia with a tribe of Akarains. With no knowledge of any other human civilization the teenage boy, Tesfahun lived across the Omo River, and he was told never to cross the river because the people there are their enemies.
Tesfahun was at the age of questioning his people's rules and lives, including his parents. As he was coming to the age of physical and spiritual maturity he couldn't understand his people's symbolic deaths and beliefs. He felt like he was being controlled by destructive behavior and violence. One of the spiritual beliefs of his people was if women birthed twins they through one into the river to die. Tesfahun knew he was born a twin and his twin was condemned to die at birth.
This story had some truth about these people and their culture. The story goes on to where Tesfahun believed he wouldn't survive among his people so he and the reader crossed the river not knowing what kind of life would he have there. Read on for more story plots to unravel. ( )