CASH MURDER MYSTERY SERIES
"Marcie Rendon is writing an addictive and authentically Native crime series propelled by the irresistible Cash Blackbear - a warm, sad, sharp, funny and intuitive young Ojibwe woman. I want a shelf of Cash Blackbear novels! To my delight I have a feeling that Rendon is only getting started." Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Night Watchman
#1 Murder on the Red River
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.
"Feisty, sensitive, and smart." - Publishers Weekly
Rendon delves deep into the history of Native American communities and the danger of forcing assimilation on a community outside the mainstream of American cultural norms."- Twin Cities Pioneer Press
2018 Winner of the Pinckley Women’s Debut Crime Novel Award
2018 Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist, Contemporary Novel Category
#2 Girl Gone Missing
NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD CASH BLACKBEAR HELPS LAW ENFORCEMENT SOLVE THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A LOCAL GIRL FROM MINNESOTA’S RED RIVER VALLEY.
1970s, Fargo-Moorhead: it’s the tail end of the age of peace and love, but Cash Blackbear isn’t feeling it. Bored by her freshman classes at Moorhead State College, Cash just wants to play pool, learn judo, chain-smoke, and be left alone. But when one of Cash’s classmates vanishes without a trace, Cash, whose dreams have revealed dangerous realities in the past, can’t stop envisioning terrified girls begging for help.
Things become even more intense when an unexpected houseguest starts crashing in her living room: a brother she didn’t even know was alive, from whom she was separated when they were taken from the Ojibwe White Earth Reservation as children and forced into foster care. When Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian and friend, asks for Cash’s help with the case of the missing girl, she must override her apprehension about leaving her hometown—and her rule to never get in somebody else’s car—in order to discover the truth about the girl’s whereabouts. Can she get to her before it’s too late?
“Against the landscape of a 1970s college town, the disappearance of a classmate draws Cash into a web of dreams, deceit and danger...Cash grows in maturity to a young woman tough and resourceful, generous of spirit, protective, and courageous. A wonderful read, heart-stopping, heartrending and heartening, often all at the same time.” ― Linda LeGarde Grover, Author of The Road Back to Sweetgrass
"The vivid writing and keen eye keep the pages turning and readers hoping for another book in this series." ― Wendy J. Fox, Buzzfeed
2020 Edgar Award Nominee for best novel in a series featuring a female protagonist
#3 Sinister Graves
NOW AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORES & ONLINE!
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 her guardian Sheriff Wheaton 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.
“Marcie R. Rendon has me cheering on Cash Blackbear even more vociferously in her latest mystery! Marcie writes the way Anishinaabe people view the world — full of rich descriptions and layered storytelling. While confronting difficult truths about religion and the value of Indigenous lives, Marcie shares revelatory moments of Cash awakening to her own worth.” —Angeline Boulley, New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter
A Minnesota Book Award Finalist, MPR News Best Book of 2022, Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book of 2022,
Publishers Weekly Big Indie Book of Fall, CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Book of Fall