Friday Memes: Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Sun-drenched wheat fields. The refrain ran through Cash's mind as she pulled open the Casbah's screen door. She stood still. Momentarily blinded, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkened barroom.

Friday 56:

Cigarette after cigarette got her into Ada -- the county sear -- at about three in the afternoon. Wheaton's cop car sat outside the jail.

This week I am spotlighting Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon. I discovered this book because of a BookBub email and then learned that it had been a One Book, One Minnesota selection for Summer 2021. Then I got another email recommending the series that was sent by Angeline Boulley whose Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed I just loved. It seemed meant that I read this one.

Here's the description from Amazon:

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 Minnesota: 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.