These Bones Can Speak tells the story of a family along the Rio Grande, the land they claimed and lost, and the violence they witnessed. It describes political paths taken and unrealized, with a particular interest in property, labor, and notions of freedom in the north and south. I wrote a little bit about it on my Substack.
These Bones will be released by Little A on January 26, 2027. It’s available for preorder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million, Greenlight Bookstore, or your favorite local shop.
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“These Bones Can Speak is a remarkable achievement. Dobkin effortlessly weaves together the individual biography of J.T. Canales, a sweeping history of the US-Mexico border across centuries, and an essential telling of the Texas Rangers’ lawlessness and violence. Beautifully told and deeply humane, the book is a gripping reminder of how cycles of state violence have shaped the lives of the border’s most vulnerable, and the consequences of failing to account for past injustice. A moral challenge to all concerned Americans, this is essential reading.”
– Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them