Bones To Ashes - Kathy Reich

shesA lso

by

K Athy R eichs

Break No Bones
Cross Bones
Monday Mourning
Bare Bones
Grave Secrets
Fatal Voyage
Deadly Décisions
Death du Jour
Déjà Dead

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KATHY
REICHS
A NOVEL

Pocket Books
N ew Y ork

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L oNdoN

T oroNTo

S YdNeY

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For thosebuoyant, bighearted, bodacious Acadiens.
On ouaira quosse que d’main nous amèneras . . .

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A cknowledgments

As usual, this novel was a team effort. Let me introduce the team.
I owe massive thanks to Andrea and Cléola Léger,
without whom this story might never have been written. Andrea and Cléola introduced me to the warm,generous, and effervescent world of the Acadian people. Merci. Merci. Mille mercis.
I am enormously indebted to all those who welcomed me during my stay in New Brunswick. This
list includes, but is hardly limited to, Claude Williams, MLA, Maurice Cormier, Jean-Paul and Dorice
Bourque, Estelle Boudreau, Maria Doiron, Laurie
Gallant, Aldie and Doris LeBlanc, Paula LeBlanc,
Bernadette Léger,Gerard Léger, Normand and Pauline Léger, Darrell and Lynn Marchand, Fernand and
Lisa Gaudet, Constable Kevin Demeau (RCMP),
George and Jeannie Gaggio, and Joan MacKenzie of
Beaverbrook House. Special thanks go to those in
Tracadie, especially Claude Landry, MLA, Père Zoël
Saulnier, and Raynald Basque and the staff at Cojak
Productions. Soeur Dorina Frigault and Soeur Zelica
Daigle, RHSJ (LesHospitalières de Saint-Joseph),
generously opened their archives and provided a tour
of the museum and cemetery at the former site of the
lazaretto.
Robert A. Leonard, PhD, professor of linguistics and director of the Forensic Linguistics Project,
Hofstra University, interrupted his busy schedule to

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x

acknowledgmentsprovide guidance on forensic linguistics. (You were
really a founding member of Sha Na Na? Yes, Kathy.
No way. Yes, Kathy. Awesome!)
Ron Harrison, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, provided information on guns, sirens, and a
variety of cop stuff.
Normand Proulx, Directeur général, Sûreté du
Québec, and l’inspecteur-chef Gilles Martin, adjoint
au Directeur général, adjoint à la Grandefonction
des enquêtes criminelles, Sûreté du Québec, provided
statistics on homicides and information on cold case
investigations in Quebec.
Mike Warns, design engineer, fielded endless questions and coached me on techie stuff. A true Renaissance man, Mike is also largely responsible for the
poetry.
Dr. William C. Rodriguez, Office of the Armed
Forces Medical Examiner, and Dr. Peter Dean,HM
Coroner for Greater Suffolk and South East Essex,
helped with details of skeletal and soft tissue pathology.
Paul Reichs provided valuable input on the manuscript.
Nan Graham and my Scribner family made the
book a lot better than it might otherwise have been.
Ditto for Susan Sandon and everyone at Random
House UK.
Jennifer Rudolph-Walsh supplied countless intangibles and the usualunflagging support.
A useful resource was Children of Lazarus: the
story of the lazaretto at Tracadie by M. J. Losier and C.
Pinet, Les Éditions Faye, 1999.

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This is the forest primeval; but where are the
hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the
woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is thethatch-roofed village, the home of
Acadian farmers.
—from “Evangeline” by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow

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1
B

abies d ie . P eoPle v anish . P eoPle d ie . b abies
vanish.
I was hammered early by those truths. Sure, I had
a kid’s understanding that mortal life ends. At school,
the nuns talked of heaven, purgatory, limbo, and
hell....