Blood and Bone Book Description:
A decade after Serpent of Moses, Jack is married to Espy and back teaching at Evanston University. They have two sons, one of whom has cystic fibrosis. Despite this challenge, life is comfortable. But that all changes when the CIA, while combing through the papers of the late Gordon Reese, uncovers the secret of Elisha’s bones. Jack’s world is then turned upside down by an urgent call from his old friend Duckey, who’s been alerted to the CIA’s probing by one of his former contacts. Jack and his family escape from their home just ahead of the CIA, and he decides to do what he should have done long ago: recover the bones and destroy them. Except the bones aren’t where he left them.
So now Jack is in a race, for the last time, to find the bones. And he’s not the only one. Pitted against both the CIA and an organization that will kill to protect their secrets, Jack and Espy follow hard-to-decipher clues across the globe before arriving in the catacombs of Paris for a final showdown that will either save their family–or tear apart everything they hold dear forever.
About the Author:
Don Hoesel was born and raised in Buffalo, NY but calls Spring Hill, TN home. He works in the Communications Department for a Medicare carrier and hopes to one day sell enough books to just say that he’s a writer. You can help with that by buying whatever his newest novel happens to be. You can learn more about his current projects at DonHoesel.com and Facebook.
Book Details:
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (July 1, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0764209264
ISBN-13: 978-0764209260
Retail Price: $14.99
My Thoughts:
Blood and Bone picks up roughly 10 years after the events in the previous Jack Hawthorne book, Serpent of Moses. He and Espy have settled down and left the craziness of fieldwork behind as they take care of their 2 sons. Little do they know that all of that will change in the blink of an eye with a phone call from Duckey, their former CIA friend.
While you don’t have to read the previous two books in this series to enjoy Blood and Bone, it does help make the story more rich and meaningful to have the complete backstory from both Elisha’s Bones and Serpent of Moses. Because this book builds a lot on the Elisha’s Bones storyline, I definitely recommend reading at least that book before diving into Blood and Bone, but Don does a good job filling in enough details that you won’t be completely lost if you don’t read it first.
In this book, we see how Jack and Espy’s relationship has developed and changed over the years. We also see a little bit of their growth spiritually. Jack continues having a hard time with faith due to the way his mind works; he wants tangible proof of everything including faith-based things. He knows that this is wrong, and he knows that he’s been given the gift of seeing the tangible proof of the truth of the Bible. He’s constantly wrestling with his desire to simply believe and his analytical mind. Espy, on the other hand, has a faith that isn’t wrapped up in the tangible, but she still wrestles with anger/temper issues that only seem to have mellowed due to motherhood.
Don Hoesel did a wonderful job of creating this adventure/suspense novel that keeps a reader guessing. Because of the multiple parties/groups who were interested in Elisha’s Bones and Jack and Espy, the reader is never sure which group was going to come after the couple next. The clues lead the resourceful couple from one country/location to the next. The fact that their son’s lives were on the line motivated them to keep going. While they both enjoy the thrill of being back in the field, time and family life has made them more mature and purposeful in their actions and reactions to situations and people. The unexpected twist at the end of the book wrapped up the story nicely.
Blood and Bone is an action/suspense book where the crazy, dangerous antics of archaeologist Indiana Jones meet up with the conspiracy theories and treasure hunting of National Treasure.
**Special thanks to NetGalley for the advance ebook version of Blood and Bone. A review is not required, and a positive review is not guaranteed. All opinions are my own.**
