Content Warnings and Resources
A Note to Readers
The Sins on Their Bones is a story about love in all its forms—the transformative and the destructive. It centers themes of intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, and the PTSD, anxiety, and depression that can follow life’s traumas. While these topics are treated, I hope, with sensitivity, I have also chosen as an author not to flinch away from the reality of what so many of us have experienced. I trust that if you are not ready to face these topics, you will save this story for a time when it will heal instead of harm.
Detailed Content Warnings
Heavy discussion of and explicit on-page depiction of spousal abuse and domestic violence (please note that TSTB features the POV of both the victim and the abuser—those readers who would struggle with the juxtaposition of these two internal monologues should take special care)
Features a POV character with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Discussion of self-medication with alcohol
Features a POV character who experienced past childhood sexual abuse by a relative
Graphic sexual intercourse (all scenes take place between consenting adults)
Gore
Desecration of a corpse
One scene of experimentation on an unwilling prisoner ending in their death, off-page descriptions of this happening multiple times
Battlefield descriptions (off-page, in the context of PTSD flashbacks), discussion of conscription of soldiers
Very brief mention of rape and child abuse in the context of war, occurring off-page
Explicit drug use
Resources for Readers
National Domestic Violence Hotline / 1-800-799.SAFE (7233)
RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) / 1-800-656-4673
NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) / 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or text 64620