Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon

Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon

Where They Last Saw Her

A Novel

by Marcie R. Rendon

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (3):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2024, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

From the award-winning author of the Cash Blackbear series comes a compelling novel of a Native American woman who learns of the disappearance of one of her own and decides enough is enough.

All they heard was her scream.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women 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's never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning out in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single 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; her loving husband, Crow, and their two beautiful children challenge her to be better every day. So when she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it—starting with investigating the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.

As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible.

Please be aware that this discussion may contain spoilers!

See what our members are saying about this book in our Community Forum.

What are you reading this week? (7/10/2025)
THE LAST TIME THEY SAW HER by Marcie Rendon
-Dotti_A


What are your reading this week? (12-12-2024)
Just finished The Last House on Needless Street by Catrina Ward … wow wow wow ! Just starting Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch and Where they Last Saw Her by Marcie R Rendon.
-Jo_S

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Rendon's book will break your heart, but it will also inspire and inform." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Rendon has delivered a top-shelf crime story that doubles as a moving testament to Native American resilience." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A stunning thriller ... Great characterization and propulsive plot, built around a current, terrifying reality." —Booklist (starred review)

"Rendon masterfully navigates the histories of trauma and brutality that continue to exist within our Native communities, laying bare the truths of colonial violence and the continuing need for closure and justice in our homelands." —Ramona Emerson, author of Shutter

This information about Where They Last Saw Her was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Marcie R. Rendon

Marcie R. Rendon, citizen of the White Earth Nation, is one of O: The Oprah Magazine's 31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now and a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award winner. Her debut novel, Murder on the Red River, received the Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel Award and was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, Contemporary Novel category, and her second novel, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the G. P. Putnam's Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Her script, Say Their Names, will be produced by Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. And her script Sweet Revenge had a staged reading at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The creative mind of Raving Native Theater, she curated Twin Cities Public Television's Art Is ... CreativeNativeResilience. Rendon received the Loft Literary Center's Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship with co-creator Diego Vazquez for their work with incarcerated women.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Where They Last Saw Her, try these:

  • The Lost Wife jacket

    The Lost Wife

    by Susanna Moore

    Published 2024

    About this book

    From one of our most compelling and sensual writers comes a searing, immersive novel about a seminal and shameful moment in America's conquest of the West. Drawing partly from a true story, it brings to life a devastating Native American revolt and the woman caught in the middle of the conflict.

  • Yellow Bird jacket

    Yellow Bird

    by Sierra Crane Murdoch

    Published 2021

    About this book

    The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it - an urgent work of literary journalism.

  • The Great Alone jacket

    The Great Alone

    by Kristin Hannah

    Published 2019

    About this book

    From the author of The Nightingale, comes a story of a family in crisis and a young girl struggling to survive at the edge of the world, in America's last true frontier.

We have 10 read-alikes for Where They Last Saw Her, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
When No One Else Will
by Amanda Skenandore
1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young
    by Zayd Ayers Dohrn
    Son of Weather Underground radicals recounts life on the run and decades of revolutionary struggle.
  • Book Jacket
    Look What You Made Me Do
    by John Lanchester
    A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee.
Who Said...

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.