Audiobook Review: Sinister Graves by Marcie R. Rendon

Sinister Graves
Author: Marcie R. Rendon
Narrator: Isabella Star LaBlanc
Series: Cash Blackbear (Book 3)
Publication: Recorded Books (October 11, 2022)
Length: 6 hours and 9 minutes

Description: 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. 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.

My Thoughts: The third Cash Blackbear mystery starts when a body floats into Ada during one spring Red River flood. The unidentified Native woman has only one clue: a torn page from a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe.

Since its Spring Break, Cash has time to help Wheaton do some investigating. Her investigation takes her onto the White Earth Reservation. She was born there but has been in the foster system since she was three years old and was raised on an assortment of farms owned by White people. 

Cash meets an older Native lady who understands Cash's gifts and who offers her a medicine bag to help protect her as she is investigating. And Cash needs the protection as her investigation leads her to an isolated church with some strange beliefs and a pastor with mesmerizing appeal. 

This was another exciting episode in an engaging series. This one talks about Native women and their babies and just how vulnerable they were and still are. The author's note talks about the many, many bodies of Native kids recently found on the grounds of the boarding schools that they were forced to attend. 

The setting is very well done in this story. The reader can certainly feel Cash's love for the Red River Valley in every page. Cash's resilience and emotional fragility make her an amazing character. 

I bought the Kindle and added the audiobook. You can buy your copy here.