The second in the Cash Blackbear series and the anticipated sequel to Murder on the Red River. Renee Blackbear, a young Anishinabe woman known as “Cash,” is in her early days at college when she finds herself involved in the disappearance of numerous blonde classmates. But when they start showing up in her dreams, she realizes she may be in too deep.
Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation who lives in Minneapolis, has created a forceful vehicle in Cash’s character as a reminder of a painful history ... Cash’s story is set in the 1970s amid the Vietnam War and the rise of the American Indian Movement, but before the Indian Child Welfare Act, the first federal attempt to keep orphaned or abandoned kids in tribal communities ... It’s a rough reminder of how far we still have to go.
Rendon, herself a member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation, highlights the plight of Native Americans who were forcibly adopted by whites and Cash’s discomfort in a land that is and is not hers. Readers will look forward to Cash’s next outing.
The furious intensity of the heroine’s simmering energy overshadows most of the cast. It’s a particularly nice touch, though, that the kidnapper, once identified, is never seen again, vanishing as completely as last week’s trash.
