Broken Fields
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4.6 • 22 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and occasional sleuth, is back on the case after a man is found dead on a rural Minnesota farm in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.
Minnesota, 1970s: It’s spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and sheriff’s assistant investigator, is doing fieldwork for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field laborer, and his wife are nowhere to be found, but Cash discovers their young daughter, Shawnee, cowering under a bed. The girl, a possible witness to the killing, is too terrified to speak.
In the wake of the murder, Cash can’t deny her intuitive abilities: She is suspicious of the farmer’s grieving widow, who offers to take Shawnee in temporarily. Cash scours the White Earth reservation for Shawnee’s missing mother, desperate to find her before the girl is put into the foster system Cash knows so well. The threat escalates when another body turns up, and Cash races the clock to uncover the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.
Broken Fields is a compelling, atmospheric read woven with details of American Indian life in northern Minnesota, abusive farm labor practices and women’s liberation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rendon's fourth outing for Ojibwe sleuth Cash Blackbear (after Sinister Graves) combines a shocking whodunit with an insightful exploration of guilt. In the previous book, Cash killed a man in self-defense. At the outset of this one, she remains unsettled by the tragedy, viewing it as a referendum on the survival instincts she cultivated during her tumultuous childhood in foster care. In the months since the incident, Cash has been hired by Minnesota farmer Bud Borgerud to help tend his land. One afternoon, she finds Borgerud dead on the farmhouse floor, his body riddled with gunshot wounds. The rest of the property is empty, save for Shawnee, the daughter of Nils and Arlis Petterson, who were renting the farmhouse from Boregerud. Shawnee is shaken and unable—or unwilling—to say what she knows about Borgerud's death, so Cash sets out to solve the murder and locate the young girl's parents before she's sent into foster care. The investigation points Cash toward Borgerud's wife, though she lacks solid proof—and then more bodies start piling up. Rendon excels at balancing plot and character, taking time to probe Cash's psychology while orchestrating a deliciously complicated mystery for her to solve. Readers will be rapt.
