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by Marcie R. Rendon
Introducing Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman whose visions and grit help solve a brutal murder in this award-winning debut.
1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota: Renee "Cash" Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system.
One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man's weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that's the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression.
"Feisty, sensitive, and smart." —Publishers Weekly
"This accomplished author has clearly undertaken more than a murder story ... she finds new depth and an ample storytelling platform for her informed views on the historic persecution of Indians." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Marcie Rendon, a member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation, masterfully weaves two stories in a seamless, vivid narrative." —Los Angeles Review of Books
"Marcie Rendon's debut, Murder on Red River, features the magnetic Cash: aged-out foster child, girl pool shark, truck driver from Minnesota's White Earth reservation ... Rendon writes of with flat-out authority." —Lisa Sandlin, author of Dashiell Prize–winning The Do-Right
This information about Murder on the Red River (A Cash Blackbear Mystery) 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.
Marcie Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, a Pinckley Prize–winning author, playwright, poet, freelance writer, and a community arts activist. Rendon was awarded the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award for 2020. She is a speaker on Native issues, leadership, and writing. Her second Cash Blackbear mystery, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by AARP Minnesota and Pollen in 2018. She lives in Minneapolis.
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