Native American author Marcie R Rendon is known in crime fiction for her smart and engaging Cash Blackbear series, but with Where They Last Saw Her she brings us a standalone novel about an amateur detective searching for some women. At a deeper level, Rendon explores the social issue of the thousands of indigenous women and girls who have gone missing and been murdered over many decades in the US and Canada. It’s a book that shows the injustice and violence done to indigenous women, through their eyes.
The novel opens with the main character Quill running on a snow covered trail on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota. She moves with ease and confidence, and is training daily for the Boston Marathon. The sound of a woman screaming in the distance brings her to a halt as she drops to the ground in fear.
There are no further screams. When Quill doesn’t see anyone else in the woods, she runs the three miles back to her car. Once she is home safely, she notifies the tribal police. They promise that they will drive to the area to check things out.
It is evident that Quill loves her home and family deeply. Her husband Crow is a mechanic who works from home unless he is out doing a service call. They have two children – a 10-year-old girl named Niswi, and a three-year-old boy called Jackson. He might be three, but he’s still referred to as Baby Boy. Quill and her friends joke about him still being called Baby Boy when he starts grade seven.
The following day, Quill and Crow return to the area where she heard the scream. The tyre tracks in the snow show that the tribal police only drove one mile down the trail and turned around. Quill sees their lack of thoroughness as a sign of incompetence and laziness. She and Crow go a couple of miles further along the trail and discover a spot where a vehicle was parked. The tracks in the snow indicate that there was some sort of a struggle beside the truck. Quill finds a beaded earring in the snow which she slips in her pocket.
The earring has a very distinctive style that Quill recognises as the work of Giigoonh Jones. She decides that she and Baby Boy should visit Giigoonh to see if she can learn anything about the woman who purchased the earring. Her friends and fellow runners, Punk and Gaylyn, join them. The earrings were sold to someone called Mabel Beaulieu – vital information to move the case forward. Quill vows to herself that she will make the tribal police find the missing woman.
Some men in a pickup truck follow Quill and her friends on their way home. The truck has no front plates and the back plate is covered with mud. Later when another woman is abducted, Quill becomes obsessed with finding out who was in that truck. Her searching does not go unnoticed. The more determined Quill becomes to identify the men, the greater the risk. This is amplified further yet another woman goes missing. You may struggle to decide if Quill is extremely brave or foolish in her determination, but you will not be able to put the book down.
Although missing indigenous women are often described as addicts or sex workers in the press, this takes a limited view of them and their lives. The press fail to see their posts on social media sharing images taken with their families and friends during happy times. When Quill researches missing and trafficked women, she discovers that in another area three oil and gas pipeline workers had lost their jobs after a sting operation uncovered the men’s role in trafficking the women. This information feeds her anxiety about what is happening in their community. The reputation of the pipeline workers is not good. Her anxiety is contagious. You too will worry about the girls and women living on the Red Pine reservation.
Rendon’s plot about the missing women and girls shines a light on the strange symbiotic relationship between the pipeline employees and the people who live on the rez. The men who traffic indigenous women as sex workers benefit financially through the exploitation. Their behaviour is not welcome in the community but it creates a strange dynamic as the oil companies bring much-needed money to the area. The hotels, restaurants and bars rely on their business. Rendon will have you invested in the lives of the people who live on the rez.
You may wonder why Quill takes so many risks in her search for the missing women. Why doesn’t she seek more assistance from the tribal police or from her husband? Crow is a good man and a loving supportive partner but this is not his story. Where They Last Saw Her is about indigenous women in control and supporting each other and in it we also see the support provide by the female elders in the community.
Also see Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden or Better the Blood and Return to Blood by Michael Bennett.
Bantam
Print/Kindle
£7.49
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
