Written with honesty and compassion, The Bone Whisperers is a heartrending journey through Bosnia and Herzegovina with French-based Finnish journalist and filmmaker Taina Tervonen, who travels across the country and visits mass grave sites. Tervonen works with scientists including Senem Škulj and Darija Vujinović as they identify bodies and speak with remaining family members of people killed during the Bosnian War.
First published in France in 2021 under the title Les Fossoyeuses, this English-language translation is skillful and wrenching. Readers will be engrossed by the stories of the missing, as told by the survivors. Through local translators, Tervonen witnesses conversations with those left behind as they describe what their brothers, husbands, or fathers were last wearing, bones they'd broken, or what they might have had in their pockets. She brings readers to sites as they are exhumed and captures the sights and smells of the aftermath of war.
For readers interested in the emotional aspects of forensic anthropology, readers of Kathy Reichs, or those wanting to know more about the human toll of war, The Bone Whisperers is a powerful choice. Tervonen also directed the documentary Parler avec les Morts (Speaking with the Dead), which depicts some of the events recounted in The Bone Whisperers, just as the book mentions Tervonen's filmmaking.
Brief but unsparing of emotional details, The Bone Whisperers demands slow and thoughtful attention. It will cause readers to reflect on how their own lives have been touched by--or spared from--the effects of war. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller