The Mover of Bones

A young girl's murder frames Vivian's (Cold Snap as Yearning) intriguingly told narrative. Jesse Breedlove, a troubled 35-year-old janitor, digs up a murdered girl's bones in a church cellar in Omaha, Nebr., and flees with the remains. His flight and the police pursuit are recounted using a chorus of alternating points of view. In each brief chapter, details about the murder and the girl's identity emerge, though more questions enshroud the mystery than are answered: is the girl related to Jesse's childhood companion, who died in a car accident on her 16th birthday? Has Jesse murdered the girl, or has he chosen himself as the dead girl's protector? The myriad narrators include an elderly woman who watches Jesse emerge from the trees behind her house; a prophetic hobo who is transfixed by the sight of Jesse carrying the bones in the desert (such a murder was ""just the thing that fed that great inferno in the sky""); a 16-year-old girl who drifts away from her birthday party and into Jesse's car; and a man who has lost his legs and is keen to comment on the sensation of missing limbs. In the end, however, not all of this grisly mosaic's pieces are put into place.