Still Life with Bones

Praise

“In this unforgettable debut, Alexa Hagerty uncovers the intimacy and sacredness of forensics, revealing it as a task that, despite its Sisyphean nature, is ever more vital to the preservation of memory, story, and ritual—a slow, intricate counterweight to the obliterating power of modern violence. Still Life with Bones is at once horrifying and impossibly hopeful.”—Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River

“Meticulous, luminous, utterly brilliant . . . The prose is as delicate and sharp as a rib cage, but the book’s beating heart is Hagerty’s wise and compassionate voice, a welcome guide through the atrocities she documents. Equally powerful about the horrors we do to one another and the care we are capable of, Still Life with Bones is essential reading as a human.”—Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

“Hagerty, a Chekhovian angel of science and poetry, has written an intimate, moving, mesmerizing account. The world is what it is, its global sorrows ever mounting, but this treasure of a book somehow makes it more bearable.”—Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“An electrifying read, full  of profound personal insight and intellectual generosity . . . Bones tell chilling stories about our past, but they preserve, too, the potency of alternative outcomes. Hagerty unlocks this possibility with wisdom and compassion.”—Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer

“Touching and achingly honest—a most amazing account of training as a forensic anthropologist . . . When Hagerty talks about ‘lives being violently made into bones,’ I defy you not to be moved.”—Sue Black, author of All That Remains

“A startling and profound meditation on death and resilience, Still Life with Bones will hold readers rapt.”—T. M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real

“With poetic prose, Hagerty takes us to a liminal space between life and death, where forensic anthropologists descend into darkness in search of light. This remarkable book is a must-read.”—Clea Koff, author of The Bone Woman

“With great sensitivity and nuance, Hagerty gives us a compelling first-person ethnographic window into the realities, rationalities, and complexities of forensic work in Latin America.”—Jason De León, Director of the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights, author of The Land of Open Graves

“Soulful but unsentimental. . . . A powerful meditation on life, death, and sorting out what can be saved of death in life.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Searing . . . Hagerty never loses sight of the humanity of the dead and the pain felt by the survivors, nimbly weaving together political history and personal narratives to illuminate the difficult process of accounting for atrocities. Intense and emotional, this is a vital rumination on political violence.”—Publishers Weekly