About Still Life with Bones
An anthropologist working with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead in this haunting account of grief, the power of ritual, and a quest for justice.
Praise for Still Life with Bones
“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 about the forensic specialists who draw from bones stories of humanity at its most evil and depraved, but also of love and devotion at their most heartbreaking, courageous, and inspiring. 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
“Still Life with Bones is a well-researched, 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. Alexa Hagerty unlocks this possibility with wisdom and compassion.” —Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer
“Touching, but 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. The text is unflinching, but then the crimes and the victims deserve nothing less. I guarantee this will make you think long and hard about cruelty and human rights and the dedication and humanity of the forensic scientist.” —Sue Black, author of All That Remains
"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. This beautifully written book is a must read for those seeking to understand not just the history of state-sponsored murder in Guatemala and Argentina, but also the important relationship between the painstaking forensic science needed to identify bodies and the interrelated emotional worlds of victim's families and anthropologists seeking justice." — Jason De León, Director of the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights, author of The Land of Open Graves
“Still Life With Bones is a stunning book, which forces the reader to ask themselves questions about grief, justice, the cruelty humans are capable of, and what it means to be human in the first place. I learnt so much about the quiet but essential work forensic anthropologists are doing as they slowly and carefully uncover the recent, violent, past in many countries, and bring some closure to relatives still searching for their missing loved ones. Dr Alexa Hagerty's writing is surprisingly beautiful, given the subject matter. The dedication of the people she meets shines through, offering hope that there can be some accountability for the crimes that have taken place, as well as a warning to anyone who might carry them out in the future.” —Sally Hayden, author of The Fourth Time We Drowned
“Still Life with Bones will hold readers rapt. Hagerty takes us deeply inside the experience of an anthropologist learning to dispassionately decode scientific clues while never forgetting that in each bone there is a brutally murdered person who still cries. A startling and profound meditation on death and resilience.” —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. In this remarkable book, she ascends to shine a light that only an anthropologist could, bathing the bones of the disappeared in their stories and in history, politics, and family testimony. Illuminated too are the forensic scientists and Hagerty herself. This is a must-read.” —Clea Koff, author of The Bone Woman
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