"I remember you."

I picked up Stephen Graham Jones’s Ledfeather again and opened to that page before it starts where all it says is, "I remember you," and I was hooked all over again, for the third time, never the last time, and the next thing I knew, the sun was rising and my heart was breaking, but in a good way, the way that resurrects you, that shows you everything you forgot to pay attention to, forgot to remember, and I closed it because it was done, again, finished for the third time, and I could’ve turned back to page one and began again, which is how the first two readings happened, in consecutive days, because this book burns you, burrows deep, and smolders, lives, reconnects cells, and balances chemistry.

If I had had this book when I was sixteen, I wonder if things would’ve been different. I wonder if this could’ve saved me the way Crime and Punishment brought me a sort of salvation, though it had to first consume and destroy me. This book, though, Ledfeather, it will save a life, it will change a life, and it will whisper to you across a century, through the forgotten dreams and lives, and the face of Doby Saxon will forever cling to the retinas, his face whited out by headlights, his hand reaching through the windshield, and you’ll fall apart with his story.