Over the past thirty years, forensic anthropologist Mary H. Manhein has helped authorities to identify hundreds of deceased persons throughout Louisiana and beyond. In Bone Remains, she offers details of fifteen riveting cases from her files—many of them involving facial reconstructions where only bones offered clues to an individual’s story. 

Manhein takes readers into the field, inside her lab, and through DNA databases and government bureaucracies as she and her team tirelessly work to identify and seek justice for those who can no longer speak for themselves. From a two-thousand-year-old mummy, to Civil War sailors, to graves disturbed by Hurricane Isaac, Manhein presents both modern and historic cases. Her conversational accounts provide a fascinating look into the stories behind the headlines as well as sometimes heart-wrenching details of people lost and found.

Manhein shows how each case came to her team, how they used scientific analysis to unravel the secrets the bones had to tell, and how facial reconstructions and a special database for missing and unidentified people assisted in closing cold cases long believed to be unsolvable. She also discusses several unsolved mysteries, further reflecting the determination and passion central to her career for over three decades.

Mary H. Manhein is the director of the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) Laboratory at Louisiana State University and the director of the Louisiana Repository for Unidentified and Missing Persons Information Program. She is the author of Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist and Bone Remains: Cold Cases in Forensic Anthropology.

by Mary H. Manhein

152 pages / 6.00 x 8.50 inches / 41 halftones

Hardcover / 9780807153239 / September 2013