PICTURE BOOK - I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer

Illustrated by Gillian Newland

2016, Second Story Press, Canada

HC  $18.95

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.29 - 385 ratings

My rating:  4.5

Endpapers:  pale sage green

1^st line/s:"The dark figure, backlit by the sun, filled the doorway of our home on Nipissing Reserve Number 10."

My comments:  I'm not sure if you would consider this a very short fiction book for middle-graders, or a quite long picture book for middle graders, but no matter which you choose it's a powerful story of how the Indigenous people - in this instance Canadian - were treated for most of the 2oth century.  Rubbish!  Ripped from their families, sent away to be practically starved and "taught" by nuns and religious factions, these children were neglected and abused and shamed.  It's sickening, and I'm glad that some of this history is hitting the bookshelves for older kids. This story is true, based on the life of the author's grandmother.

Goodreads:  When eight-year-old Irene is removed from her First Nations family to live in a residential school she is confused, frightened, and terribly homesick. She tries to remember who she is and where she came from, despite the efforts of the nuns who are in charge at the school and who tell her that she is not to use her own name but instead use the number they have assigned to her. When she goes home for summer holidays, Irene's parents decide never to send her and her brothers away again. But where will they hide? And what will happen when her parents disobey the law? Based on the life of co-author Jenny Kay Dupuis’ grandmother, I Am Not a Number is a hugely necessary book that brings a terrible part of Canada’s history to light in a way that children can learn from and relate to.

MOVIE - Wind River

R (1:51)

Limited release 8/4/17

Viewed 9/2/17
IMBd:  7.8

RT Critic:  87  Audience:  91
Critic's Consensus:  Wind Riverlures viewers into a character-driven mystery with smart writing, a strong cast, and a skillfully rendered setting that delivers the bitter chill promised by its title.

Cag:  6/Awesome

Directed by Taylor Sheridan

Acacia Filmed Entertainment

Written by the director

Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen

My comments:  This was definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a while.  Captivating story - horrific as it was.  It included some of the best acting I've seen in a long while, complex characters.  A frigid cold winter, with scenery shots just right so that they accentuated the plot.  The devastation of the Wind River Reservation and the lives of the people trying to eak out an existence there was the centerpiece for this devastating story.  And then there was Jeremy Renner.  He was incredible, backed superbly by a cast of Native American actors that I've seen often enough to recognize, including Graham Greene.  The story will be hard to forget, and so will Jeremy Renner's performance.

RT Summary:   WIND RIVER is a chilling thriller that follows a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who teams up with a local game tracker with deep community ties and a haunted past (Jeremy Renner) to investigate the murder of a local girl on a remote Native American Reservation in the hopes of solving her mysterious death. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, WIND RIVER also stars Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, Julia Jones, Kelsey Asbille, and James Jordan.
IMDb Summary:  A veteran tracker with the Fish and Wildlife Service helps to investigate the murder of a young Native American woman, and uses the case as a means of seeking redemption for an earlier act of irresponsibility which ended in tragedy.

26. Merciless - Lori Armstrong

2013, A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster

329 pgs PLUS discussion questions

Goodreads rating: 4.17

My rating: 4/Liked it a lot

Contemporary Murder Mystery; South Dakota

TPPL
First sentence/s:  "I blamed my unrealistic expectations of becoming an FBI special agent on The X-Files.  Granted, Mulder and Scully were fictional characters, but working in the FBI was nothing like portrayed on any TV shows.  Disappointment made e want to crawl inside the TV and kick some ass."

My reactions:  I love the complicated person that is Mercy Gunderson.  She's smart, tough, strong - physically - and loyal.  She's also got weaknesses and a few vulnerable soft spots that appear once-in-awhile.  She has an incredible urge to own, know, practice and know guns.  She was, after all, an army sniper.  She lives on a huge ranch in South Dakota on, near, around the Eagle River Reservation.  I've read the previous book in the series, but it was so long ago that I forgot all the numerous relationships.  This was one of the drawbacks of the book that took it down a star.  Everyone's related to someone, many generations worth, and it got very confusing.  There are a lot of "everyones."  If there's a fourth in the series I will, of course read it, but I'll begin by figuring out the family tree/s and posting it at the beginning of the book!   

Goodreads summary:  In the spirit of J.A. Jance, Nevada Barr, and C.J. Box comes Shamus Award-winning author Lori Armstrong’s sharp and gritty Merciless, about Black Ops army sniper-turned-FBI agent Mercy Gunderson and her quest for vengeance when a killer narrows his sights on her and her family.Mercy Gunderson is thrown into her first FBI murder case, working with the tribal police on the Eagle River Reservation, where the victim is the teenaged niece of the recently elected tribal president. When another gruesome killing occurs during the early stages of the investigation, Mercy and fellow FBI agent Shay Turnbull are at odds about whether the crimes are connected.

              Mercy can’t discuss her reservations about the baffling cases with her live-in boyfriend, Eagle River County Sheriff Mason Dawson, due to job confidentiality, and the couple’s home on the ranch descends into chaos when Dawson’s eleven-year-old-son Lex is sent to live with them. While hidden political agendas and old family vendettas turn ugly, masking motives and causing a rift among the tribal police, the tribal council, and the FBI, Mercy realizes that the deranged killer is still at large—and is playing a dangerous game with his sights set on Mercy as his next victim.

     Torn between her duty to the FBI and her duties to those she loves, Mercy must unleash the cold, dark, merciless killer inside her and become the predator, rather than the prey.

2. Iron Lake - William Kent Krueger

#1 Cork O'Connor
1998, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster
438 pgs.
Murder Mystery for adults
Finished Jan. 10, 2012
Goodreads Rating: 3.94
My Rating:  Awesome, couldn't wait to read/5
Acquired TPPL paperback
Setting: contemporary northern Minnesota in winter
1st sentence/s:  "Cork O'Connor first heard the story of the Windigo in the fall of 1965 when he hunted the big bear with Sam Winter Moon.  He was fourteen and his father was dead a year."

My comments: This book, the first in a new series for me, kept my interest and beckoned me to read even when I shouldn't have taken the time. Cork O'Connor, the protagonist, is smart and real, with small flaws and misgivings. Krueger did kill off a lot of his characters, though, but I can't think of any holes in the plot to speak of and the mystery was quite plausible. The setting, rural Minnesota that includes an Indian reservation in the blizzards of winter (it's winter right now, as I write this, and my feet are freezing, so I can totally relate) worked really well. It's exciting to find a new series that has a setting and protagonist that immediately pulled me in. I'm going out on a limb giving it a five, it's probably closer to 4.5, but I'm not going to quibble.

Goodreads Review:
Part Irish, part Anishinaabe Indian, Corcoran "Cork" O'Connor is the former sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. Embittered by his "former" status, and the marital meltdown that has separated him from his children, Cork gets by on heavy doses of caffeine, nicotine, and guilt. Once a cop on Chicago's South Side, there's not much that can shock him. But when the town's judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on a mind-jolting case of conspiracy, corruption, and scandal.

As a lakeside blizzard buries Aurora, Cork must dig out the truth among town officials who seem dead-set on stopping his investigation in its tracks. But even Cork freezes up when faced with the harshest enemy of all: a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home

17. Mercy Kill - Lori Armstrong

#2 in Mercy Gunderson (SD) series
For: adults
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2011
paper $15.00
296 pgs. & Reading group guide
Rating: 4.5

I saw this at a bookstore and was able to get it from the library. I didn't realize it was the second in a series. I figured it out right away, though, because there are lots and lots of characters mentioned with no previous reference to them. You can figure most everything out pretty quickly, but there's an antagonism between the protagonist, Mercy Gunderson, and a guy named Kit that's never explained at all. You could figure out the plot of the first book by the time you finished this one.

After I read the first short chapter I put the book aside and decided not to finish it. I was really turned off. Mercy Gunderson is a retired special ops sniper who loves guns and ammunition of any and every kind. She goes out into a field of prairie dogs and starts picking them off, one by one, for kicks. How could that not turn me off?

When I did pick up the book about a week later, I was not enamored of this protagonist. A hard-drinking, looking-for-trouble kind of person who is feeling sorry for herself is not the type of lead character that makes you want to read on. But read on I did. The story kept getting more and more interesting and about a third of the way through I was hooked.

Mercy is working tending bar and bouncing, which keeps her from drinking quite so much herself. A close friend from her Army past reappears in her life, but he has been employed as a spokesperson for the oil company that is trying to build a pipeline in the area and she is greatly opposed to this. However, Jason had saved her life and she feels she owes him. They have a huge history. But then he is murdered and she has no idea why or by whom.

Mercy is also having a secret affair with the sheriff, Mason Dawson. (The author, Lori Armstrong, says she'd have Josh Duhamel play him in a movie.) He was her father's hand-picked replacement for the job of sheriff when he died. However, when Mercy feels he is not attempting to investigate Jason's murder, she decides to run against him for sheriff. Okay.

Investigations proceed. The federal government is involved. There are all sorts of family and ranch things going on. The townspeople are always around and in her face. There are bad guys. Drugs and drug deals. Guns. Shooting. Interesting story. And yes, I'll read the next one, which is currently in the works.