The Valley of Bones was published by Heinemann in 1964, opening the war trilogy — the third movement of the Dance. Jenkins has been commissioned as a second lieutenant in a Welsh regiment, and the novel follows him through training and the early months of the war. The title comes from Ezekiel 37 — “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones” — and the religious reference is appropriate: Jenkins’s commanding officer, Captain Gwatkin, is a romantic who models himself on the ideal of the warrior-officer and is systematically humiliated by a reality that refuses to conform to his vision.
Gwatkin is one of Powell’s most sympathetic creations — a decent, limited man whose ambitions exceed his abilities and whose earnestness is both admirable and painful to watch. His affair with a barmaid, his failures of command, and his eventual demotion are rendered with a compassion that is unusual in the Dance’s generally ironic register.
The military world provides Powell with new material — the hierarchies, the absurdities of army bureaucracy, the enforced intimacy of barracks life — but his method remains the same: patient observation, ironic detachment, and the gradual revelation of character through accumulated detail. The war volumes are often considered the Dance’s finest achievement, partly because the wartime setting strips away the social niceties that cushion peacetime life and exposes the essential qualities of the characters.
Collecting The Valley of Bones
First edition (Heinemann, London, 1964): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $80–$200
- Very good/very good: $30–$80