What Bones Speak Of: Murders, Wars, and Genocide Through the Eyes of a Forensic Expert

Clia Coff is a world-renowned forensic expert who has been to the sites of all major military conflicts in recent decades. At just 23 years old, she joined a UN mission to Rwanda, becoming one of 16 scholars involved in excavating human remains to study and prove the genocide of the Tutsi. In the next four years, she will visit Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, closely examining human remains in search of answers to how they died. Her book is part memoir, part field diary about what she witnessed: the exhumation of nearly five hundred bodies from a single grave in Kibuye, Rwanda; the discovery of victims of the massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia, bound with wire; excavations in Kosovo before the eyes of the victims' relatives. At times recounting heart-wrenching details of her work—hellish working conditions, UN bureaucracy, and confronting the grief of survivors—Coff fills her story with immense hope and a quest for justice. She is convinced: despite the authorities distorting the narratives of what happened, bones never lie.