Where They Last Saw Her

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Rendon, a citizen of the White Earth Nation of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, has produced a stunning thriller about Indigenous women who are murdered, raped, or trafficked--an ongoing outrage. (According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, in any given month in the period 2012-2020, between 27 and 54 Indigenous women were murdered or missing.) The disturbing action kicks off when Quill, a young woman who lives on a HUD reservation in northern Minnesota, is running in the pine forest when she hears a woman's terrified scream. The tribal cops are slow to move after Quill reports the incident, so she takes it upon herself to investigate. A powerful element throughout is the depiction of the daily dangers Quill and her friends face as Indigenous women as they investigate and go about their day-to-day lives, often being harassed by white males who work on the new pipeline. An especially chilling scene takes place when Quill enters a local casino and witnesses a young woman of her tribe being dragged out by two white men. The action, and the peril to Quill and her family and friends, keep intensifying, as two more women go missing. Great characterization and propulsive plot, built around a current, terrifying reality.

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Starred review from August 19, 2024
An Ojibwe community organizer investigates the disappearances of two Indigenous women in Rendon’s powerful latest (after Sinister Graves). While running on a reservation in northern Minnesota one snowy morning, young mother Quill hears a woman’s piercing scream in the woods. After rushing to check out the scene—first alone, then with the help of a tribal cop—all she turns up is an earring with familiar beadwork. Shaken, Quill casts a suspicious eye toward the oil pipeline workers who have recently been encroaching on Ojibwe territory and enlists her friends, Punk and Gaylyn, to help her inquiries. The trio’s sleuthing turns up a pattern of violence against Ojibwe women, much of it perpetrated by white patrons at the local casino. The stakes are further raised when a second woman goes missing and Punk abruptly cuts contact with Quill and Gaylyn. Rendon’s keen ear for the rhythms of Indigenous speech and Midwestern slang lends authenticity to her tense, wrenching portrait of life on the margins. Add in solid thrills and a conclusion that leaves readers with just the right number of unanswered questions, and Rendon has delivered a top-shelf crime story that doubles as a moving testament to Native American resilience. Agent: Jacqui Lipton, Tobias Literary.