Dust Off the Bones: A Novel

Written by Paul Howarth

Narrated by David Linski

“Arresting, powerful, and very much worth reading.”—Scott Simon (NPR)

""A tale of violence and redemption in the Australian Outback....Fast-paced and brimming with colorful, realistic detail, the novel poses disturbing questions about the Australia’s historic cruelty to its native inhabitants....A complex, sophisticated morality play.""  (Starred Kirkus Review)

The author of the acclaimed Only Killers and Thieves returns to turn-of-the-century Australia in this powerful sequel that follows the story of brothers Tommy and Billy McBride, the widow of their family’s killer, Katherine Sullivan, and the sadistic Native Police officer Edmund Noone

In 1890, estranged brothers Tommy and Billy McBride are living far apart in Queensland, each dealing with the trauma that destroyed their family in different ways. Now 21, Billy bottles his guilt and justifies his past crimes while attempting to revive his father’s former cattle run and navigate his feelings for the young widow Katherine Sullivan. Katherine, meanwhile, cherishes her newfound independence but is struggling to establish herself as head of the vast Broken Ridge cattle empire her corrupt late husband mercilessly built.

But even in the outback, the past cannot stay buried forever. When a judicial inquest is ordered into the McBride family murders and the subsequent reprisal slaughter of the Kurrong people, both Billy and Police Inspector Edmund Noone – the man who led the massacre – are called to testify. The inquest forces Billy to relive events he has long refused to face. He desperately needs to find his brother, Tommy, who for years has been surviving in the wilderness, attempting to move on with his life. But Billy is not the only one looking for Tommy. Now the ruthless Noone is determined to find the young man as well, and silence both brothers for good.

An enthralling, propulsive adventure that builds in suspense, told in gorgeous prose and steeped in history and atmosphere, Dust Off the Bones raises timeless issues of injustice, honor, morality, systemic racism, and the abuse of power. With an unflinching eye, Paul Howarth examines the legacy of violence and the brutal realities of life in a world remarkably familiar to our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063076037

Paul Howarth

Paul Howarth is a British-Australian author and former lawyer who holds an MA in creative writing from University of East Anglia, where he was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Scholarship. In 2018 his debut novel, Only Killers and Thieves, was published to international acclaim, winning the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for best fiction, and appearing on numerous other awards and books of the year lists.

Reviews for Dust Off the Bones

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dust Off the Bones by Paul Howarth is the sequel to Only Killers and Thieves that introduced the two McBride Brothers, Billy and Tommy, and explained how the rest of their family was murdered and aborigines were wrongly blamed. A posse led by a very evil man wiped out a whole tribe in retaliation. This book picks up five years later and follows both brothers and how their lives developed all the while they were under the eye of Noone, the evil man who wants to make sure they keep their mouths shut.

The villain of the book, Noone, is truly one of the most vicious bad guys I have read about. As he and his psychopath assistant move through life, systematically eliminating any opposition, you lost hope that somehow justice will be served. The author obviously wants to shine a light on the attempted extermination of the aborigine population, but he does this through a well thought-out and vividly executed story that pulls the reader into the lives of the two McBride brothers who are both truly haunted by their role in the massacre and terrified at the thought of Noone.

Dust Off the Bones was an excellent sequel, a story of violence and redemption set in Colonial Australia that the author gives colour and realistic detail to. I was totally enthralled by this novel.

[norinrad10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dust off the Bones is set in Australia in the late 1800s. As such it begins as a familiar yarn, two brothers face a tragic event that sets them off on different life paths. It's a story that has been told for a thousand years, in a thousand ways.

The writing is crisp and the characters engaging, and thus the reader is drawn in. Somewhere about 2/3 through the book. there is a subtle shift and the book becomes something else.

Instead of coming to the surface to wrap up the story, it dives deeper. Deeper into the implications of the past. Deeper into the role of guilt in our daily actions. Deeper into the role violence plays in our society. Deeper into the characters themselves.

Author Paul Howarth has constructed q captivating morality story located in a world few of us are familiar with but is not much different from the one we inhabit. Part thriller, part family saga, and part historical fiction, Dust Off the Boners should be at the top of every readers list.

[vicki_weisfeld · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Responsibility, redemption, and squandered chances are among the themes in Paul Howarth’s second novel, which will live in your memory long after turning the last page. Just as indelible is the portrait of the Australian outback—the dust and drought—and the hardness and hardiness of the people who take up residence in such a hostile environment.
Billie and Tommy McBride, ages sixteen and fourteen, respectively, arrive at their remote home to find their mother and father shot dead, and their younger sister Mary, dying. The Native Police arrive to investigate, headed by a sociopathic white inspector named Noone. The police claim to believe that the crime was committed by an aboriginal group called the Kurrong, and set off in pursuit, taking the two teenagers with them.
Eventually, they find the group and slaughter them—men, women, and children alike, upwards of a hundred people, except for a few women they keep alive for other purposes. The boys are made complicit in these depredations and the subsequent revisions of events. The rest of the novel is about how the McBride boys cope with that guilt and horror.
Noone remains a dominant presence in their lives, even though they rarely see him. He has insisted the boys split up and have nothing to do with each other or he will return and kill them, any family they have, and everyone they care about. They believe him.
Billie marries successfully to a widow with a sizeable station. Tommy, with his black companion Arthur, has a job on another distant station, where he’s putting up fencing under the thumb of a vindictive overseer. In a confrontation Tommy inadvertently kills the overseer. He and Arthur flee, and, with the telegraph likely one step ahead of them, lie low.
What modest successes either young man achieves are tainted by the anxiety that the annihilation of the Kurrong will come to light, that Noone will decide they are a risk to his position and he and his minions will track them down, and, in Tommy’s case, that the murder he committed will come out.
If you’re familiar with the writing of Cormac McCarthy or Donald Ray Pollock, you may find Howarth’s bracing writing style similar. Reading this book is like having all your veins and arteries cleaned out, cleared of everything easy and soft. While the writing is hard as a diamond, it’s also beautiful and properly paced to magnify the weight of the men’s actions.