Guest Post by PG Lengsfelder, Author of A Bounty of Bone

About the Book

After years of abuse for her albinism and macabre face, Eunis believes she’s finally turned her life around and shed the superstitious beliefs that tormented her as a child. Now on the precipice of a successful television career, she’s offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel as part of a global TV crew investigating the surreal weather in South Africa’s isolated Land of the Silver Mist.

There’s just one problem: Eunis and her adopted New York family are abruptly informed of the abduction of their young niece, Kyra, who’s been taken for her albino body parts in remote Tanzania. The family pleads with Eunis to find her, their last and only hope of finding Kyra alive.

Eunis tries to temper the family’s expectations. But when she’s separated from her TV crew, she journeys thousands of miles and finds herself alone in the shadow of Tanzania’s untamed Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a massive 2.5-million-year-old volcanic cauldron, inhabited by the world’s highest density of wild dogs, lions, and hyena.

Closing in on the truth, can Eunis survive the chilling local superstitions and nightmarish forces hunting for body parts that look like her own?

The Guest Post

In 2016 when my flawed protagonist, Eunis, was fully born in BEAUTIFUL TO THE BONE, it was because the human spirit has always fascinated me. What, I wondered, would a macabre-looking  child with albinism have to do to overcome our society’s preoccupation with beauty? And with that simple challenge to Eunis, she and I were off exploring.

All my novels, though fictional, are based on research and fact—often unimaginable fact. So much so, that readers of BEAUTIFUL TO THE BONE questioned me on the historically gruesome background of the non-fictional building Eunis inhabits in New York City. Yet, the record of it—and Charles Dickens’ chronicled visit to it—exists. The DNA of beauty in the novel, the research that drives Eunis till she becomes obsessed with it, is verifiable. And it catapults her into new traps from which she must escape. But how? That’s how Eunis challenges me.

To some readers of BEAUTIFUL TO THE BONE, those facts seemed impossible, figments of my twisted imagination. But they were and are certifiable. At least for now. That’s the world we live in, changing every minute. There’s so much we don’t know or won’t acknowledge. And that goes for the nonphysical realm, too. Eunis knows this, but she’s resistant, despite her powerful, often odd, intuition about things. She helps remind me of these unaccountable feelings and events, and how I should pay more attention to them.

So as Eunis’ life progresses from her rural Minnesota farmhouse and her mother’s cruel, superstitious upbringing, she (and I) find there are even more deadly challenges awaiting her because of her looks; shocking challenges that exist today in the real world. A BOUNTY OF BONE is inspired by those real, current events—barbaric, superstitious folklore that lives and thrives below our awareness, and in the ether. No matter how busy or under pressure we are in our own lives, I hope we won’t look away from them. Eunis reminds me we can all be heroes.

About the Author

As with any journey, life has offered me more strange twists and turns than I could have imagined. At seven, sure I was destined to be a fireman or a forest ranger, my parents gave me a toy printing press. I thought, I’ll put out a neighborhood newspaper. With a circulation of ten—at five cents a copy—I was hooked: I had readers. I’ve been writing ever since.

I began as a copywriter in a major New York advertising agency and co-authored the best-selling nonfiction book FILTHY RICH (Ten Speed Press). My first two psychological suspense thrillers BEAUTIFUL TO THE BONE and OUR SONG, MEMENTO MORI (Woodsmoke Publishing) met with critical acclaim, including the BestThrillers.com 2021 Finalist Award for Best Romantic Suspense Thriller, and the Frontier Tales Reader’s Choice Short Story Award for the eerie 1879 crime story “Amidst the Effervescing Hemlock.”

I guess all those early years watching shadowy, supernatural movies has had its effect. There is so much we don’t understand about the human mind or the unseen forces around us. Besides, writing is my drug of choice.

I’ve written songs, I’ve written for numerous publications, my stories have been heard on National Public Radio and seen on CNN, Discovery Channel, and other national television. I’ve written and produced documentaries on AIDS, the environment, the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, and Bud Nathan’s bathroom remodel (no kidding). Like I said, strange twists.

Among my other writing awards are a regional TV Emmy and four Emmy nominations.

I’m a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. I believe that there are many things that can’t be seen, but that are real. When I can get away from my keyboard, there’s nothing better than being in nature. A BOUNTY OF BONE is my latest work.