Rene Denfeld spent two decades knocking on doors, pulling case files, and sitting across from people accused of crimes they may not have committed. Now the Portland defense investigator has channeled that work into "The Talking Bone," a thriller about the women who vanish and the systems that fail to look for them.

The book follows Ruby Spencer, an exonerator — an investigator who works to free the wrongly convicted. Ruby is racing to save Mitchell Brown, a Black man who has spent 10 years on death row in Georgia and is two weeks from execution. The case turns on a human bone found in the woods by Mitchell's blind grandfather in a fictional Oregon Coast town Denfeld calls Chinook. The bone, the novel suggests, belongs to a missing woman.

The themes are personal. Denfeld left home in her mid-teens and educated herself with bags of books from the Portland library. She has worked as a licensed investigator for 20 years, first for the public defender's office and now as a contractor hired by attorneys. She does juvenile work and frequently works with the accused. She is also a foster and adoptive mother to three children.

In the novel, Ruby's own mother goes missing when Ruby is 12. Denfeld told Oregon ArtsWatch that women like Ruby's mother represent the many who disappear and are never searched for. The character is not autobiographical, though. Still, the overlap between author and character is unmistakable. Both are investigators. Both are drawn to people the system has overlooked.

"The Talking Bone" is Denfeld's fifth novel. Her previous books include "The Enchanted" (2014), "The Child Finder" (2017), "The Butterfly Girl" (2019), and "Sleeping Giants" (2025). "The Enchanted" won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger and an ALA Medal of Excellence for Fiction. The New York Times named Denfeld a Hero of the Year in 2017 for using fiction to highlight social inequity.

Denfeld will discuss the novel with Portland writer Lidia Yuknavitch at 7 P.M. on July 23, at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St.