Where They Last Saw Her

Where They Last Saw Her
By Marcie R. Rendon
Bantam Books, 2024. 315 pages. Mystery.

All they heard was her scream. Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to people who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she hasn't ever stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning out in the woods, she hears a scream. When she investigates, she finds tire tracks and a lone, beaded earring. Things are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don't know what it means to quit; she has her loving husband, Crow, and two beautiful children who challenge her to be better every day. So when she realizes another woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something-and her first stop is the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes. As Quill closes in on the truth behind the missing woman in the woods, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them.

The content of the story is not what I would consider a "fun" mystery as it focuses on the very real and prevalent issue of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women. As a member of the White Earth Nation, Rendon clearly understands this and wrote with an expected amount of solemnity. The writing was emotionally intense with fleshed out characters that were easy to connect to.  I appreciated that the mystery had aspects of reality mixed in, like a mother putting her investigation on hold to get her children to their appointments on time.  As sad, tired, and angry as this book made me I am glad that I read it. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted and intersectional challenges that Indigenous women face in their daily lives.  

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The Seed Keeper

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Wandering Stars

By Tommy Orange
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Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

KJ