Reviews
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Reviews
Ross' tale is a deeply affecting balm worthy of countering the malaise of the 2020s.
--Peter Eckhardt
Slug Magazine 1.12.24
A captivating and compelling read, Betsy Ross’s The Bones of the World refuses to look away from the ugliest struggles of human existence in a broken world. As one character exhorts another, “In this life of inevitable pain, each loss allows us to make a choice—to hide from the pain, adopting mask on top of mask so that we can no longer recognize ourselves, or stand with dignity and open hearts and go where the pain leads.” Through her smooth and informed narration, Ross gives convincing voice to a cast of characters whose traumas and tragedies she skillfully connects through time and space, making us care about their choices and fates, which are ultimately ours as well.
---Marlene Trestman
author of Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin
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…. A powerful and affecting novel of the fight against antisemitism across the ages.
---Kirkus Reviews
The Bones of the World feels terrifyingly familiar in its portrait of a contemporary America riven by political resentments and prone as always to find someone—the same someones as always, alas—to blame and banish and purge. But despite its well-rendered settings of agony (the Holocaust, the Inquisition, a mother’s inconsolable grief for her son), Betsy Ross's novel succeeds in winning through to a hope that’s not beyond suffering but that is composed of suffering. By making anguish into story, the novel implies, those who are scapegoated and victimized may not only preserve bitter experience but transmute it into a kind of salvation. Vivid, moving, intricately structured—The Bones of the World is an excellent debut.
---Michael Griffith
author of Trophy: A Novel
An unflinching assessment of the ragged edge between good and evil, tolerance and intolerance, Ms. Ross’s debut novel offers a solution that can mend hearts and patch together lives that have been torn apart – faith. Three stories braid and ravel through the pages, mysteriously but ineluctably connected, until they finally come together in something very like the illumination.
Throughout, suffering itself emerges as both the content and the conduit of the stories we must tell to make sense of it all. A deeply moving and memorable narrative journey across the landscape of loss and faith.
Throughout, suffering itself emerges as both the content and the conduit of the stories we must tell to make sense of it all. A deeply moving and memorable narrative journey across the landscape of loss and faith.
– Lynn Stegner
author of Because a Fire Was in My Head
A book about returning to the heart over and over and how to access the courage to return, Betsy Ross’s debut novel dives head-first into the darkest regions of human suffering and breathes life into every part of us we thought we may have lost. The Bones of the World offers us a choice—we can either let grief calcify and haunt us, or allow it to initiate us into a secret world governed by an ancient, forgotten language that connects us all. A brave, beautiful work.
---Rachel Nagelberg
Author of The Fifth Wall
I devoured The Bones of the World
in 36 hours. Rachel, Sariah, and Jakob became my friends and heroes: I felt instantly woven into the fabric of their stories. Betsy L. Ross is a master world-builder, thoughtfully crafting not one but three immersive worlds in which true loss, true love, and true redemption fight, fail, and flourish. Clear your calendar and read this book.
--- Jerry Rapier
Artistic Director, Plan-B Theatre, Salt Lake City
A profound spiritual meditation on the human reaction to atrocity and if any meaning can be found in great suffering....
Told with a wry sense of humor that appears at unexpected but welcome places, The Bones of the World is an ode to the many Jewish storytellers that have carried–and continued to carry on–this crucial work. But it is also a lament that these stories exist to be told at all.
---Erica Ball
Reviewer, Independent Book Review
It's rare to see a novel about suffering, redemption, religious clashes, and social inspection blended with a time travel piece that tests the patterns and illusions of different cultures and peoples.... Ross's novel is atmospheric, compelling, and thought-provoking.
--- D. Donovan
Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
The Bones of the World is a prolific account of why we must 'never forget' what history encourages us to learn.
--- The Feathered Quill
A captivating mystery novel that leaves readers pondering long after the book is read. There are no answers but rather an offering of important personal and philosophical questions to think about as the reader is guided through the intricate maze of intertwining personal stories of the characters. This is definitely a highly recommended read.
--- Literary Titan
Encompassing three periods, 5 centuries apart, the book chronicles the lives of three mainly different characters. They are Jews, and because they are Jews each suffers their own unspeakable torment. The lead character finds herself confined to a cemetery filled with the ghosts of children, victims of past antisemitic violence. She is tasked with chronicling their stories: “they must never be forgotten.”
I finished Ross’s book on the eve of a European trip. In Prague’s Jewish Quarter I couldn’t help wondering “how many stories?” Still in Czechia, but nearer the German border, my travels passed by the Gestapo concentration camp at Terizin: Today a vast field of head stones guards the approach, and again “how many stories?” Trip over I returned to my placid US routine when, MY GOD, the October 7 Hamas terror attack. It doesn’t end: “the stories.”
Ross is a skilled storyteller and her timing in this, her first novel, makes it a must-read. The subject is a most painful one, but one it seems that must be revisited again and again.
Review by H. Robison