Bones of the dark moon

During construction on an idyllic Bali seashore, workers uncover skeletons, victims of brutal mass murder. The discovery sets the village of Batu Gede astir. The life of Made “Nol” Ziro, a stalwart member of the community with a little gambling problem, is turned upside down. Could one of those skeletons be that of his schoolmaster father, who disappeared during the massacres of 1965?

As Nol sets out to find the truth, his path crosses that of American anthropologist Tina Briddle, who has secrets of her own, and who is determined to give a voice to the unknown bones. She suspects that the key to their mystery lies with Reed Davis, an enigmatic retiree dwelling among the Ubud expat community and rumored to have been a CIA spy.

Drawing them together is the mysterious Luhde Srikandi, who fifty years ago whispered her enchantments from the shadows of conspiracy and who begins to whisper again. What happened on that sleepy beach isn’t all dusty memory. Secrets are revealed, vengeance is unleashed, and a forbidden love flares to life.

Arguably the most traumatic cataclysm of Bali’s rich and fascinating history, the massacres of 1965 remain mostly unknown to the island’s visitors. Interweaving historical drama with contemporary Bali life, Bones of the New Moon is compulsively readable, a page-turner with unexpected twists leavened with dashes of humor, laying bare the love and hatred, the tragedy and irony, and the joy and despair of our common human predicament.