Cash Blackbear Mysteries Series by Marcie R. Rendon

One Book, One Minnesota Selection for Summer 2021 Introducing Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman whose visions and grit help solve a brutal murder in this award-winning debut.1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions... moreOne Book, One Minnesota Selection for Summer 2021 Introducing Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman whose visions and grit help solve a brutal murder in this award-winning debut.1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system.One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man’s weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that’s the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression. less

Nothing in Renee Blackbear’s world had prepared her for college or for the hurt that happens in the Twin Cities.Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Chippewa woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three... moreNothing in Renee Blackbear’s world had prepared her for college or for the hurt that happens in the Twin Cities.Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Chippewa woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes, and at 13 was working farms, driving truck. Wheaton wants her to take hold of her life, signs her up for college. She gets an education there at Moorhead State all right: sees that people talk a lot but mostly about nothing, not like the men in the fields she’s known all her life who hold the rich topsoil in their hands, talk fertilizer and weather and prices on the Grain Exchange. In between classes and hauling beets, drinking beer and shooting pool, a man who claims he’s her brother shows up, and she begins to dream the Cities and blonde Scandinavian girls calling for help. less

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... moreSet 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. less

Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, is back on the case after two men are found dead on a rural farm in Minnesota in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.1970s Minnesota. It's spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is hoping to make some spending money doing spring field work for local farmers while attending college—and she finds a dead man on the kitchen floor of the property's rented farmhouse... moreCash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, is back on the case after two men are found dead on a rural farm in Minnesota in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.1970s Minnesota. It's spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is hoping to make some spending money doing spring field work for local farmers while attending college—and she finds a dead man on the kitchen floor of the property's rented farmhouse. The only possible witness to the murder is the young daughter of a Native laborer. The girl is too terrified to speak about what she’s witnessed, and her parents seem to have vanished. In the wake of the murder, Cash can't deny her intuitive she is suspicious of the dead man's grieving widow, who offers to take in the girl temporarily. While Cash scours the county and White Earth reservation trying to find the missing mother before the girl is placed in the care of a social worker—the same woman who placed Cash in foster care a decade earlier—another body turns up. Concerned about the girl's fate, and with the help of local Sheriff Wheaton, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.Broken Fields is a compelling, fast read with seamlessly woven in details of rural life, the American Indian Movement, abusive labor practices, and women's liberation. less