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Duncan McCallum is traveling with fellow Scottish prisoners to the New World where they will join a New Community, which provides them with another option besides execution. Even though Duncan is a prisoner, he is the only person on board with any medical experience, so he is forced to deal with injuries. One of the prisoners apparently kills himself, and Duncan must come to terms with the loss of his friend and clan member. Then when the Community’s schoolteacher is killed, the situation becomes much worse. Duncan is ordered to find the killer and provide all the evidence to convict him. These Community Leaders have a person they want Duncan to frame but he will not be forced to convict an innocent person regardless of the pressures put on him. When Duncan arrives in the New World, he finds himself caught up in a family dispute that reflects the tensions between the New World and the cultures of the Old. Lord Ramsey is one of the Founders of this New Community, but his world threatens to destroy those he should love. Ramsey's eldest daughter is unable to fit into ‘civilized’ society and is pushed to the side. Her inability to fit into his world results in his attempts to overpower her spirit and her independence – much like the situation between the colonists and Indians. Duncan must travel across the country and enter the battlegrounds of the French and Indian War to find the truth behind the murder and the conspiracy behind the Community itself. BONE RATTLER starts off quite slowly. In fact the first 30 pages are a struggle to finish. I almost did not make it past them, but once these pages are complete, the story begins to come together as the characters and their situations are fleshed out. Pattison uses several subplots including those dealing with Colonists and Indians to make the book more complex. At first these seem to be a distraction but their value slowly becomes evident as Pattison ties everything together as the tension builds. Elliot Pattison’s books focus on the ugliness of humanity. He explores the various forms of cruelty that effect all human interactions – both intentional and unintentional cruelty. In BONE RATTLER, this can be seen in the intentional cruelties shown to the convicts on board and the native populations and the unintentional cruelties shown to family members and other community members. While these cruelties do not necessarily improve the mystery or plot of the book, they do provide a poignancy that stays with the reader long after story details are forgotten. For this reason only, Pattison’s books should be read even if his subject matter does not appeal to every reader.
Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, February 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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