11. Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon

#1 Cash Blackbear

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

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.

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.