Searching for Savanna
The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A gripping and illuminating investigation “that is far overdue” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises) into the disappearance of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind when she was eight months pregnant, highlighting the shocking epidemic of violence against Native American women in America and the societal ramifications of government inaction.
In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna’s, but Savanna’s body would not be found for days.
The horrifying crime sent shock waves far beyond Fargo, North Dakota, where it occurred, and helped expose the sexual and physical violence Native American women and girls have endured since the country’s colonization.
With pathos and compassion, Searching for Savanna confronts this history of dehumanization toward Indigenous women and the government’s complicity in the crisis. Featuring in-depth interviews, personal accounts, and trial analysis, this timely book investigates these injustices and the decades-long struggle by Native American advocates for meaningful change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This shocking true crime saga from Gable (Blood Brother) draws attention to the widespread violence against Native American women by zeroing in on a single, gruesome case of it. In 2017, Savanna Lafontaine Greywind, a 22-year-old nurse's aide and member of the North Dakota Spirit Lake Nation who was eight months pregnant with her first child, disappeared. Her family appealed to the police, who performed only a cursory search of Savanna's apartment. The next day, Savanna's corpse was recovered in plastic trash bags from a nearby river, and her baby daughter, alive and well, was found in her upstairs neighbor's apartment. The neighbor, Brooke Crews, later pleaded guilty to murder, having forcibly removed Savanna's baby from her body; Savanna died either from blood loss or from being strangled by the cord found around her neck. Gable nimbly links Savanna's horrific fate and the lax police response to her disappearance to a "hidden epidemic" of similar situations plaguing Native communities across the U.S., punctuating the narrative with statistics and political testimony that bring home the scope and scale of the ongoing tragedy. This devastating account will be an eye-opener for many.
