A follow-up to South of Everything that also serves as a standalone novel, Bones traces the story of Missy, a young woman from a plantation-owning family in the Deep South. When Missy is violently attacked as a teenager, she is sent to a boarding school and her beloved Mr. Washington is wrongfully imprisoned. Baffled by the pervasive racism of her environment, Missy allows her fierce love for Mr. Washington to be her guiding light on her mission to be reunited with him.

When Missy meets Chief Bakari, a Mbulu tribal chief, she is tasked with returning Old Thomas's bones to the mystical lolololo tree. Missy readily accepts, as Old Thomas was Missy's protector, and he had introduced her to the magical, healing tree.

Missy's quest brings her to Tanganyika, where she feels an immediate kinship with the people of Africa. But tensions are mounting, and Missy's journey will reach a fever pitch when a brutal act threatens her existence.

A work of magical realism and folklore, Bones is an immersive, at times macabre love story that spans continents gripped by racism and upheaval.