Overview

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • 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. “Absorbing . . . multifaceted and elegiac . . . Still Life with Bones captures the ethos that drives the search—often tireless and against the odds—for truth.”—The New York Times WINNER OF THE JUAN E. MÉNDEZ BOOK AWARD • A NEW YORKER AND BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration—of building something new with the ‘pile of broken mirrors’ that is memory, loss, and mourning.” Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights.  In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones, forensics not only offers proof of mass atrocity but also tells the story of each life lost.  Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence. Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, histories of violence and resistance, and her own forensic coming-of-age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.

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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

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 Cantu, 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. 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 An 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. Hagerty unlocks this possibility with wisdom and compassion. -Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Liliana's Invincible Summer Touching and 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. -Sue Black, author of All That Remains A startling and profound meditation on death and resilience, Still Life with Bones will hold readers rapt. -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. This remarkable book is a must-read. -Clea Koff, author of The Bone Woman 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. -Jason De Leon, Director of the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibri Center for Human Rights, author of The Land of Open Graves Soulful but unsentimental. . . . A powerful meditation on life, death, and sorting out what can be saved of death in life. -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Every beautifully written page of this extraordinary book affirms the individuality of each victim, and honors the living who serve them and their survivors. -BookPage (starred review) Searing . . . Intense and emotional, this is a vital rumination on political violence. -Publishers Weekly

Author Information

Alexa Hagerty is an anthropologist researching science, technology, and human rights. She holds a PhD from Stanford University and is an associate fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her research has received honors and funding from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Ethnological Society, among other institutions. She has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wired, Social Anthropology, and Palais de Tokyo.

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