In a similar way to how Jane Harper opened up the global reading world’s eyes to a treasure trove of Australian crime writing (or Mankell and Larsson did for Scandi Crime), the international success of Lakota author David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s outstanding Winter Counts will hopefully open more doors for Native American crime writers.
If you enjoy rural crime writing that offers unique characters and evocative settings alongside intriguing plotlines laced with real-life issues, then add Marcie R Rendon’s excellent books starring tough Ojibwe teenager Cash Blackbear to your to-read pile. Cash has survived tragedy and foster care and juggles truck driving with college classes, pool hustling, and occasionally helping her guardian and friend, Sheriff Wheaton, solve crimes.
Set among the sugar beet fields and small towns of the Red River Valley during the Vietnam War, Girl Gone Missing sees Cash look into the troubling disappearance of one of her freshman classmates. Rendon offers readers a different spin on rural noir in a fascinating tale centred on a remarkable heroine who’s 19-years-old but has lived more than most twice her age: torn from her reservation as a youngster, surviving the wreck that killed her mother and bounced around white foster families who saw her as unpaid labour, Cash sees things differently and Rendon delivers an absorbing, character-centric mystery that explores prejudice among a well-evoked setting.
Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
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