Broken Fields is the fourth book in Marcie R Rendon’s character-driven series featuring Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibway woman in 1970s Minnesota. With a plot involving a murdered farmer and an abandoned child, Broken Fields will draw you in and by the time you finish the book you may also have a greater understanding of the challenges faced by indigenous children in the foster care system of the day.
The story is told from Cash’s perspective, and she’s a woman who sees beauty in the rich agricultural land of the Red River Valley. Both a bright college student and a hardworking farm labourer, Cash is still struggling with the trauma that occurred in Sinister Graves, so getting back to plowing fields appeals to her. When not working, she likes to supplement her income shooting pool. Occasionally, Cash will informally assist Sherriff Wheaton with police issues that happen in the rural community.
Her relationship with Wheaton is at the heart of this novel. They have a connection going back years. When her inebriated mother drove the family car into a ditch, he rescued the family from the overturned vehicle, but Cash’s mother did not survive the accident. No effort was made to keep the siblings together, so Cash had a challenging childhood moving from one foster home to another. She was often treated badly by foster parents who saw her as free labour. Wheaton did what he could to make her life more bearable. When she hit her late teens, he found her an apartment in Fargo, North Dakota.
The book opens with Cash plowing a field for Bud Borgerud. While working, she notices a car sat running outside Bud’s house. It piques her curiosity so she goes to the house, knocks and when nobody answers she enters the house where she discovers a dead man lying on the kitchen floor. Later she realises that the corpse is her current boss, Bud.
Cash senses that there is somebody else in the house and discovers a terrified young girl hiding under one of the beds upstairs. The child is traumatised by whatever events led to Bud’s murder. All that Cash can get from the little girl is that her name is Shawnee. She notifies Wheaton and tries to calm the child who is reluctant to leave the safety of her hiding spot. Cash wonders what happened to the girl’s parents.
This case hits home for Cash. She sees herself in the five-year-old girl, Shawnee. All of those old feelings of abandonment and fear come back especially when she must leave Shawnee in the care of the same social worker who placed her in unsatisfactory foster homes. Her concerns increase when she discovers that the social worker has placed the girl with Bud’s widow.
While Wheaton is dealing with a bank robbery, Cash begins to search for Shawnee’s mother and believes she’s had a vision of the woman. Cash is more in touch with her visions now than she was in the previous books. Her friend Jonesy, an elder who also has visions, is guiding Cash to trust and accept her intuition.
There is much to admire in Cash. In spite of a less than ideal childhood, she is resilient. She is gradually building connections with those who look out for her. Characters from the previous books in the series, like Al make appearances in Broken Fields. There are definite moments of tension for Cash in the book however it is intermittent. You will be invested in the character in a novel which is as much about her dealing with her past as it is an intriguing murder mystery.
For more crime fiction by Native American authors see Exposure by Ramona Emerson and Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden.
Soho Crime
Print/Kindle
£11.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
