The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

By: Stephen Graham Jones

Narrated by: Owen Teale, Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland

A chilling historical horror story set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

©2025 Stephen Graham Jones (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

Dark Gospel of the Nachzehrer

I’ve never been good at putting my critical thoughts into words on a page. With movies or books, I’ve always found it easier to talk them out with someone. But every now and then I read something that compels me to write, if only to get the weight of it off my chest.

And what a fitting book for such a thing: the oral tale of a Native American man, committed to the page by a pastor as part of a “final confession.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The frame of the story begins in 2012, with college professor Etsy Beaucarne. A journal belonging to her great-great-grandfather (or trisaïeul as the family's French name compels her to call him) is unearthed from a soon-to-be-demolished building and handed to her for study. That ancestor, Arthur Beaucarne, was a Lutheran pastor in Miles City, Montana, 1912. In the journal, Arthur documents his conversations with a Pikuni (Blackfoot) man named Good Stab.

Good Stab’s confession is the true heart of the novel, though it’s layered deep within the narrative. He tells Arthur of his birth, his life, and what he became. His story grows darker and more monstrous as he slowly reveals what he is and what kind of life “if that’s what you call this" he has led. Yet against his own acts of survival stand the far greater monstrosities of the Napikowann, white soldiers and settlers pressing into his tribe’s lands.

What follows is a delirious, blood-soaked narrative: beautiful and dreamlike, horrendous and nightmarish. The real horror doesn’t come from Good Stab and the monster he is, but from the broken promises, massacres, and savagery inflicted on his land and his people. Atrocities he cannot stop, despite his efforts, and for which he can only weep tears of literal blood.

It’s a story of generational trauma and cultural guilt, about Manifest Destiny and genocide. How much do we owe for the crimes of our ancestors? How much must we pay for the crimes of our youth, when we were “different people”? In his 1912 world, Arthur says, looking back at what was done to the Blackfeet tribes, “You can’t stop a country from happening.” To which Good Stab counters: “But we were already a nation... We didn’t ask you to come.”

Etsy herself observes that, despite her ancestor’s barbs and prejudices in writing it down, this is still an Indian story. Both Arthur and Etsy begin to adopt Good Stab’s language, “Sun Chief,” “dirty faces,” “blackhorn” just as Good Stab takes on the traits of the animals and people he consumes. And I admire how unapologetically Jones makes this an Indian story. There are no glossaries, no hand-holding. The burden is on us, the readers, to engage with it on its own terms not a quaint, sanitized tour of Blackfoot culture and history.

I could say much more, but to go further would risk spoiling discoveries best made in the reading. I’ll simply say I can’t recommend this book enough. To horror fans, to lovers of history, to anyone willing to be unsettled and confronted. Open the Dark Gospel of the Nachzehrer and see for yourself. I’ll leave you with what struck me, and so many other readers, as Good Stab’s most damning line:

“I’m the one who has to drink the blood of my people just so I can keep drinking that blood... What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.”

Haunting and Magnificent

The sort of book that haunts you for days after you’ve finished reading it. Kia kaha ra Good Stab ⭐️

You are what you eat. Smoking is bad

I felt disappointed. Maybe it would’ve been a better read than a listen. I expected a darker story but this was really about a glutenous mopey pastor. The Indian storytelling part was great though.