Sinister Graves
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4.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Marcie Rendon is writing an addictive and authentically Native crime series propelled by the irresistible Cash Blackbear—a warm, sad, sharp, funny and intuitive young Ojibwe woman. I want a shelf of Cash Blackbear novels! To my delight I have a feeling that Rendon is only getting started."
—Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Night Watchman
Set in 1970s Minnesota on the White Earth Reservation, Pinckley Prize–winner Marcie R. Rendon’s gripping new mystery follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, as she attempts to discover the truth about the disappearances of Native girls and their newborns.
A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe.
Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.
When Cash happens upon two small graves in the yard of a rural, “speak-in-tongues kinda church,” Cash is pulled into the lives of the malevolent pastor and his troubled wife while yet another Native woman dies in a mysterious manner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set sometime in the 1970s, Rendon's strong third Cash Blackbear mystery (after 2019's Girl Gone Missing) finds 19-year-old college student Cash, an Ojibwe who was separated from her family when she was three, continuing to serve as the unofficial assistant of Wheaton, the sheriff of Minnesota's Norman County, who rescued her from the foster care system. When flood waters on the Red River float the body of an unidentified Native American woman into Ada, Minn., the coroner determines that she was smothered to death. The coroner shows Wheaton and Cash an item he found on the body: a torn page from a hymnal with words in both English and Ojibwe. Cash later learns of the victim's possible connection to another dead woman, who attended an unusual fundamentalist church run by the charismatic Pastor John Steene. Despite being warned to stay away from Steene, Cash seeks him out, determined to get to the truth. Rendon deepens the complex character of her eccentric Native American lead, who believes she can read minds and has revelatory out-of-body experiences. Lisbeth Salander fans will be eager to see more of Cash. Agent: Jacqui Lipton, Raven Quill Literary.
