About the Book

CLAY AND BONES

My Life an as FBI Forensic Artist

Clay and Bones is a raw, riveting, and darkly fascinating look at crime, art, and survival inside one of the world’s most secretive institutions.

For more than a decade, FBI forensic artist Lisa Bailey worked on hundreds of cases—documenting crime scenes, photographing charred corpses, and reconstructing faces from the shattered remains of skulls. Her specialty, facial approximation, was part science, part sculpture, and sometimes the only way to give the unidentified back their name.

But behind the bureau’s polished public image was a workplace that could be just as brutal as the crimes she confronted. When Bailey became the target of sexual discrimination and harassment, she discovered the FBI’s instinct to protect its own—covering for abusers and retaliating against those who spoke up.

Now Bailey pulls back the curtain with this unflinching memoir, told with candor, grit, and flashes of gallows humor. From the surreal world of forensic artistry to the personal toll of fighting an entrenched system, Clay and Bones is part memoir, part true crime, and part survival story—a unforgettable account of resilience in the face of both death and betrayal.