Plot Summary
Burning of the Witch
Elsebeth vividly recalls the witch burning she witnessed as a little girl, where three accused "witches" were executed by fire in her impoverished, war-torn village. One woman, unafraid, confesses and retells her fateful bargain with the devil for mere survival. As she burns, she seems to break from reality's hold—her animal eyes lock with Elsebeth's, searing fear and a strange kinship into the girl's soul. The moment marks Elsebeth forever; forms her skepticism, dread, and deep hunger for power in a world that takes everything from women. The witch's burning impresses a lifelong horror, her laughter and flight becoming the root of Elsebeth's worst fears and greatest ambitions.
Ambush on the Road
On a ravaged Bavarian road in 1635, Sister Ursula—cloaked as a commoner—freezes in terror when mercenary soldiers attack their caravan. Violence erupts: screams, rape, and murder. A scrappy peasant girl grabs Ursula and drags her to safety. They flee through forest and stream, hungry and wounded. When a soldier pursues them, Elsebeth saves Ursula's life, smashing the man's skull with a rock. Bonded by immediate trauma, they shelter together, tending wounds of body and spirit. As they wait, Elsebeth's fire and Ursula's gentleness form a fragile partnership; both scarred by what they witnessed, they become each other's unwilling hope.
Saint's Skull Found
Deep in the woods, Ursula and Elsebeth discover a mortally wounded traveler clutching an ornate box—a saint's skull, dressed in silk, hair, and glass eyes. Claiming it has the power to grant a wish if reunited with its body, the man entrusts them with both the relic and its embroidered map before dying. Ursula, devoutly Catholic, sees in this mission a chance for redemption and healing—for herself and her lost sisters. Elsebeth, skeptical and pragmatic, agrees out of desperation for hope, despite her doubts about saints, miracles, or wishes. Their shared quest, half faith and half hunger, begins.
Flight and Bonding
As Ursula's hidden identity as a nun is revealed, the women exchange confessions of cowardice and loss. Each woman's shame—the death of Ursula's companion Sister Hildegard, Elsebeth's abandonment of her family—forms a new intimacy. They face hunger, cold, and haunted memories on the road. The relic's map guides them deeper into war's devastation. Yet, amidst horror and hunger, Elsebeth's practical wit and Ursula's gentle compassion blossom into chaste affection and finally, longing. They imagine what they would wish for, baring dreams and griefs never shared before—worlds apart in faith, but alike in desire for safety and belonging.
Village of the Dead
Seeking shelter, Ursula and Elsebeth find a deserted village left in terror by revenants: the living dead, whose thirst has left gnawed corpses. They sleep in haunted, looted houses, plagued by nightmares and guilt. When Ursula is lured by a revenant and nearly killed, Elsebeth rescues her with fire but feels betrayed and abandoned. Their brush with death, terror, and the supernatural tests the limits of their trust, and cracks begin to form. Elsebeth's trauma and Ursula's self-sacrifice clash, giving rise to a night of conflict but also a kiss—desire entwined with fear, shame, and vulnerability.
Appetite and Abuse
Otto, a hardened mercenary, is introduced as he and his comrades pillage, torture, and kill for survival, with the threads of compassion long worn thin. When a necromancer—a pale man with animal's eyes—enters Otto's world, vengeance arrives. Otto and his fellow soldiers are haunted literally: the dead rise, old victims hunt them, and one by one Otto is forced to murder his friends at the necromancer's command. Otto becomes the necromancer's unwilling undead servant. His arc exposes the cost of ordinary cruelty in war, and the ways trauma corrupts victim, witness, and perpetrator alike.
Relics and Reverence
The relic's journey leads Ursula and Elsebeth through starvation, haunted woods, and undercurrents of religious horror—revenants like the Nachzehrer and Aufhocker. They find a near-starved family: a mother who's eaten grass, a husband rotting in the shed, and an Aufhocker—the child's restless corpse—who clings to Elsebeth until she buries him alongside his father. The lesson: war's hunger drives sin and desperate mercy alike. Ursula wrestles with the meaning of her faith, while Elsebeth faces the cost of survival. Each burial, blessing, and act of kindness becomes a thread binding them closer.
Hauntings in the Night
Nightmares plague both women: Elsebeth is haunted by her dead sister and the witch's laughing promise. Ursula dreams the relic-saint visits her, angered, urgent. In wakeful nights, Ursula's kindness—combing Elsebeth's hair, singing old lullabies—offers Elsebeth fleeting comfort from her pain. They begin to heal each other's wounds through physical affection; for Ursula, this is a holy act, for Elsebeth it is both pleasure and shame. The fear of condemnation—spiritual, social, and personal—shadows their tenderness, but neither can now leave the other.
Otto's Confessions
The necromancer drives Otto, now a voiceless undead puppet, closer to Ursula and Elsebeth, tracking the skull. As they travel, the necromancer taunts Otto, making him confess in excruciating detail every crime, every failure of kindness, every agony he's allowed or participated in. Otto's horror is personal—a stripped soul forced to account for war's violence, the rape of innocents, and his part in it. Confession does not bring forgiveness. Instead, as his body rots and mind frays, Otto becomes a warning: the wages of unchecked cruelty is endless hollow suffering.
Touch and Trust
Ursula and Elsebeth, now lovers as much as companions, reclaim softness. Ursula tends Elsebeth's wounds; Elsebeth washes Ursula at a riverside, scrubs and bruises her as both absolution and affirmation. Their bodies bear the evidence of love and war—tears, laughter, and desire—but trust remains fraught. Both are haunted by secrets: Ursula's guilt over Sister Hildegard's death; Elsebeth's memories of sexual abuse under Gottfried, and her own resentful arousal. Through touch, pain gives way to pleasure—not as erasure, but as stubborn rebellion against a world that punishes women for surviving.
Dead Child's Ride
When a dead child—the Aufhocker—clings to Elsebeth and will not let go, she must carry him until he's properly buried. Together, they help his starved surviving mother lay him and her husband to rest. These acts, though grisly, are acts of decency amid war's rot. Ursula sees in each grave and poultice a measure of redemption. Elsebeth sees futility, but clings to Ursula's hope. In the graveyard, kindness and horror coil together, making Ursula and Elsebeth's love all the more vital and fragile.
The Aufhocker's Mother
Elsebeth and Ursula help the starving mother, digging graves for her husband and son. The woman, spent by famine, soon dies and is laid to rest. While preparing the necessary corpse-disguising for a ruse, Ursula musters courage to desecrate the dead for a greater good: they need a human skull to trick the necromancer. Each step—cutting, boiling, sewing hair—is a surrender of innocence and an acceptance: to survive and to love means sometimes violating what you used to hold sacred. Ursula especially is touched by the horror and the necessity of their actions.
Splitting Hearts and Secrets
At Ursula's destroyed convent, the depth of war's obliteration is made clear—the dead sisters lie blackened by plague, and Ursula's former mentor has killed herself. Grief and guilt, already heavy, become unbearable. The survivors steal the needed relics before leaving, and each woman wonders aloud what she would truly wish for: lost family, absolution, or simply each other. At night, beside bones and sacred theft, Ursula and Elsebeth finally make love, trying to replace memory's pain with each other's touch. It is not salvation yet; it is a fierce, necessary defiance.
Suicide and Sisterhood
Ursula finds her beloved Sister Junius, the last surviving nun, hanged in the bell tower. Overcome by grief, Ursula is comforted by Elsebeth for the first time, roles reversed. Unity in sorrow hardens their resolve: they will not merely seek wishes, but must ensure the necromancer cannot use the skull for evil ends. Each now fights, not only for herself, but for a love forged through shared hardship—a love that finds in sacrifice its own salvation, or damnation.
Stealing the Saint
Finally catching up to Otto and the necromancer, Ursula and Elsebeth attempt a dangerous ruse: swapping the real saint's skull for their forged version. Otto, decaying but newly thoughtful, tries to warn them: the skull is not what they think. In the chaos, Ursula is gravely wounded by Otto; Elsebeth, desperate, kills Otto to save her. The theft propels them to the crossroads, where they hope to unite skull and body and claim their wish. Fatigue, blood, and death circle them—the price for hope is mounting.
Resurrection Bargain
At the crossroads, the truth is revealed: the "saint" is just the necromancer's wife, cursed to half-life—not a wish-granting relic. The necromancer kills Ursula in his rage. Plunged into despair, Elsebeth is left alone, denied love, hope, and family. As she is strangled by Ursula's reanimated body, Elsebeth calls for God; He does not answer. When Elsebeth prays to Satan instead, the devil appears. In return for her soul, the devil offers Elsebeth power: she can reanimate Ursula, but as a necromancer—damned and marked by a snake's eyes.
The Witch's Price
Elsebeth accepts Satan's bargain, binding Ursula's soul back to her body—granting her life, but also cursing both. The necromancer is killed; the cursed skull remains, a reminder of necromancy's price. Elsebeth uses her new powers only to restore Ursula. Their reunion is bittersweet: Ursula is alive but now a walking corpse, and Elsebeth's eyes gleam with infernal light. Both women must reckon with what has been lost, sacrificed, and loved—knowing salvation may be forever out of reach, but together they have denied the world one more victory.
Salvation or Damnation
Ursula, Elsebeth, and the restless bones of the necromancer's wife travel a haunted land, seeking holy places and the promise of redemption. Elsebeth—now a witch, marked by her snake eyes—cannot enter consecrated ground, and Ursula, though alive, is not of the living. They are outcasts, but no longer alone. Their love, born of ruin, becomes its own kind of heaven, even in damnation. In the end, they choose each other: faith and love irreconcilable but interwoven, and in their refusal to abandon one another, a last, stubborn hope endures.
Analysis
A modern lens reveals Bone of My Bone as a devastating, beautifully rendered meditation on faith, survival, and the cost of loving under relentless oppression
Johanna van Veen's novel dissects war's horrors—plague, famine, sexualized violence, and spiritual despair—not merely as backdrop, but as the primary mover shaping every hope, sin, and love. The quest structure is brilliantly subverted: the relic, a symbol of promised grace, instead delivers only ambiguous, hard-won agency—at a ghastly price. Through the intertwined journeys of Elsebeth and Ursula—peasant and nun, pragmatist and believer—the novel asks what it means to hold onto love and selfhood when all higher powers are silent or cruel. Magic and the supernatural offer neither rescue nor easy horror, but illuminate the endless tension between mercy and necessity, piety and rebellion. The ultimate "miracle" is not resurrection or salvation, but the refusal to let go of love, even when it damns and scars. In this story, the human capacity for endurance, tenderness, and chosen kin becomes the last, stubborn hope in a world riddled by death. The lesson: when grace fails, those who survive must conjure their own salves—and decide for themselves if love is worth the price of their soul.
Review Summary
Reviews for Bone of My Bone are largely positive, averaging 3.89/5. Readers praise van Veen's vivid, grotesque imagery, atmospheric depiction of the Thirty Years' War, and incorporation of Germanic folklore. The sapphic romance between Ursula and Elsebeth is frequently described as rushed or insta-love, dividing readers. Many appreciated the religious themes as historically fitting, while others found them tedious. Secondary character Otto and the necromancer subplot were highlights for several reviewers. The ending drew mixed reactions, with some finding it emotionally resonant and others feeling it was underwhelming.
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Characters
Elsebeth
Elsebeth is tough, clever, and fiercely independent—a farm girl tempered by hunger, famine, and war's cruelty. Haunted by her family's deaths and childhood trauma (the witch burning), Elsebeth's skepticism masks a desperate longing for belonging and restoration. Her pragmatic atheism struggles against the supernatural horrors she witnesses; her capacity for kindness battles the urge to protect herself at all costs. Elsebeth's erotic and emotional awakening with Ursula brings both joy and fear. Abused by Gottfried, surviving rape and loss, she's world-wise but secretly gentle. Ultimately, Elsebeth's greatest sin is her deepest love: for Ursula, she bargains her soul to Satan, accepting damnation in exchange for a love that is simultaneously healing and destructive. Her journey is from powerlessness to horrifying autonomy as necromancer.
Sister Ursula
Ursula is mild, softhearted, and deeply religious—a cloistered nun drawn into violence and loss. Protected by faith and duty, she is nonetheless deeply anxious and haunted by guilt over Sister Hildegard's death. Sister Ursula's nurturing instinct drives her to acts of mercy—healing, praying, blessing, soothing. Her capacity for love transcends dogma: she finds joy and solace with Elsebeth even as it challenges her beliefs about sin, shame, and salvation. Ursula's arc is that of martyr and mystic—given the opportunity for redemption or damnation. She is resurrected as a walking dead, no longer fully belonging to the world of the living or the saints, her fate entwined with Elsebeth's sacrifice and damnation.
Otto
Otto begins as a ruthless, hardened soldier used to atrocity. His capacity for violence is matched only by his hunger for distraction—food, loot, sex. However, once the necromancer enslaves him, Otto is forced to confront the human cost of his actions. Through endless confessions and sorcerous torment, he is stripped bare of his machismo, left raw and regretful. His arc is not one of forgiveness, but warning: unchecked violence erodes the soul until the only escape is the end of suffering itself.
The Necromancer
The necromancer is intelligent, charismatic, and unhinged. Driven by desperate grief at his wife's death, he bargains with Satan for necromantic power, hoping to undo the laws of God and nature. His pact with the devil twists his love into possession; his wife's resurrection curses them both. The necromancer's cruelty is casual and gleeful. His conquest of the dead, Otto, and the living is presented as both profound loneliness and an abomination. In the end, he is both victimizer and victim of his refusal to let go of lost love.
The Saint's Skull / The Necromancer's Wife
First believed to be a wish-granting saint, the skull turns out to be the Necromancer's wife—a woman forced back to life against her will. Her powers are those of hunger, illusion, and dreaming; she manipulates Ursula and Elsebeth out of desperation for peace, not malice. Her journey parallels Elsebeth and Ursula's: a woman caught between the worlds of saints and sinners, hope and vengeance, love and horror. In the end, she yearns only for an end to her suffering—a peace the living cannot grant.
Sister Hildegard
Ursula's musical and spiritual mentor, Hildegard's death—born from mercy but tainted by desperate violence—becomes Ursula's defining grief. Her soul's fate in purgatory propels Ursula's belief in the healing power of faith, mercy, and prayer as acts of penance.
Sister Junius
The convent's infirmarian, gentle and wise. Junius' demise (by suicide amid plague) symbolizes the annihilation of the old, comforting world. Ursula's deep affection and guilt over Junius's fate spurs her final collapse and need for redemption.
Margarethe
Margarethe's fate (crippled, then raped and killed by soldiers) haunts Elsebeth's dreams. Her absence is the black hole around which Elsebeth's need for family and belonging orbits; her memory both wounds and motivates.
The Nachzehrer / Aufhocker / Folk Creatures
These revenants represent unfinished business, guilt, and all that will not rest: hunger, shame, unburied grief. Their presence blurs the line between superstition and the literal supernatural, manifesting horror as both psychological and material realities.
The Devil / Satan (in Elsebeth's vision)
Satan appears to Elsebeth when God does not, embodying temptation, the limits of faith, and the cost of love above all else. The price for Ursula's resurrection is damnation and transformation—Elsebeth becomes the very thing she once feared and hated.
Plot Devices
Dual Narration: First- and Third-Person Split
The novel deftly weaves between Elsebeth's first-person and Ursula's third-person, increasing reader intimacy and distance as needed. Elsebeth's sections place us directly in trauma's whirlpool, immersing us in peasant thinking, desire, and horror. Ursula's third-person sections offer religious reflection, self-doubt, and nuance—a counterweight to Elsebeth's pragmatic earthiness. This genre-blending point of view strengthens the novel's themes of identity, faith, and unreliable testimony.
Macabre Miracles & Anti-Quest Structure
What appears as a folkloric pilgrimage—bring a relic home, receive a miracle—unravels into a horror-tragedy about the limits and costs of hope. The "saint" is no saint; the wish is a manipulation; miracles deliver not joy but horror. Both Ursula and Elsebeth's arcs invert heroism: their perceived salvation damns them, their rebellion against fate gives only ambiguous comfort. The novel's use of folk horror, revenant legends, and the wish motif deliberately undermines expectations and exposes desire as a dangerous vulnerability.
Folkloric Horror & Symbolism
The numerous appearances of dead things—Nachzehrer, Aufhocker, witches, Benedictine relics—are not simply creatures of the night; they are the literalization of memory, trauma, and unfinished business. Their rules and defeats tie directly to the protagonist's guilt, fears, and needs for absolution. The use of folk magic, superstition, and peasant rituals asserts peasant wisdom as both defense and limitation in a world abandoned by all but evil.
The Devil's Bargain as Emotional Climax
When Elsebeth, left alone by the hypocrisy of faith and abuse of men, bargains with Satan for Ursula's life, the text does not romanticize her damnation but shows it as both a choice and a tragedy. The narrative structure foreshadows and parallels the original witch's flight, circling back to the image that first haunted Elsebeth as a child: power gained at the price of one's soul.
Guilt and Redemption as Recurring Motifs
Guilt—especially for survival—is the ghost that follows every step: Ursula's for Sister Hildegard, Elsebeth's for her family and Margarethe, Otto's for his brutality. Yet the promise of Christian redemption is constantly delayed, qualified, or withheld. Only in mutual love and shared suffering do the characters create meaning, and even that brings fresh damnation.
Queering of Faith, Family, and Survival
The central relationship subverts both religious dogma and folk expectations; their desire is both healing and forbidden, their family found not in blood but in chosen kinship. The narrative structure privileges survival and tenderness in a world where traditional salvation is impossible.
