THE BONES OF THE WORLD

Ross presents a speculative novel with magical elements in which a woman discovers hidden stories of the past, including the horrors that Jewish people endured.

All over the United States, a government-sanctioned group that call themselves the Righteous are violently attacking Americans of Jewish descent and faith. A disturbing number of citizens believe that it’s been proven “once and for all the Holocaust never happened” and that present-day Jewish people are liars and manipulators. Rachel, who’s Jewish, is hidden away by her Christian husband, Henry, for her own safety; this became necessary after someone they thought was a family friend reported Rachel to the government for curating an exhibit of “homosexual nudes” at the art gallery that Henry owns. Meanwhile, Rachel’s son, David, is on the run after getting involved in a bombing plot with members of the Resistance. In the distant past, young Sariah and her family are Christian converts, though they practice their Jewish faith in secret to hide from the Inquisition. After the destruction of her family, she’s hidden away by family friends. Finally, there’s the story of Jakob, a young boy in 1939 who’s trying to survive the horrors of the Holocaust as he sees his friends and family destroyed and murdered one by one. Rachel finds that she’s tied to them all, not just by her heritage, but also by her connection to a cemetery that’s near her hideaway. In a novel with aspects of magical realism, the horrors that Jewish people have suffered sit side-by-side with a timely story of a modern society in which antisemitism is on the rise, resulting in an emotional and compelling tale. The chronological jumps are fairly easy to follow, although the fact that the book starts with Rachel already hidden away and then leaps backward in time only three pages later is somewhat jarring; so is the fact that same chapter switches points of view between multiple characters. However, the author’s style effectively smooths out as the book continues, and the characters and timelines become sharply distinct.

A powerful and affecting novel of the fight against antisemitism across the ages.