listened on Libby
320 pgs.
2017
Adult Mystery/Historical Fiction
Finished 2/28/2026
Goodreads rating: 3.7
My rating: 4
Setting: 1970 1970 Fargo/MN state line
Adult Mystery/Historical Fiction
Finished 2/28/2026
Goodreads rating: 3.7
My rating: 4
Setting: 1970 1970 Fargo/MN state line
My comments: Cash is 19; smart, feisty, Native American, and really close to being an alcoholic, which is hard to watch. She spends her life driving trucks for the local farms during the day and playing pool each night. She drinks and smokes hard, has no friends except for the local sheriff who first met her when she was three years old, and lives a pretty solitary, empty life. Then there's a murder nearby, and she helps the sheriff investigate. Making it even more interesting, it's set in 1970. At only 6 hours long it was the perfect length, didn't drag on and on, and I enjoyed all the indigenous information.
Goodreads synopsis: Set in 1970s along Red River Valley, Marcie R. Rendon's gripping new mystery follows the life of a young Ojibwe woman as she struggles to come to terms with the callous murder of a Native American stranger, bringing to life the gritty, dark reality of a flawed foster care system and the oppression of indigenous people.
Renee "Cash" Blackbear, a 19-year-old, tough-as-nails, resilient Ojibwe woman, has lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota's Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. Her life revolves around driving truck for local farmers, drinking beer, playing pool, smoking cigarettes, and solving criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, who's also her guardian and helped her out of the broken foster care system. Together they must work to solve a murder across cultures in a rural Midwest community layered in racism, genocide, and oppression.





























