Grant Farley’s Bones of a Saint has the gritty, filmic quality of small time Orson Wells border hoods meets S.E Hinton good-boy-gone-wrong sincerity. It’s an atmospheric read—more like you are stuck in a box full of rocks than in a book—a niche world of small gains with tragic consequences. The story reads fast and tight and colorful and your eyes always feel low to the ground. The dusty landscape and every object and every person, and even hope itself, pulls you forward toward an ending which is like the sting of a scorpion. You may not see yourself in this book, but the book never lets you out of its sight.