Broken Fields

Broken Fields by Marcie R. Rendon follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and occasional sleuth, back on the case after a man is found dead on a rural Minnesota farm. This story is the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.

Set in Minnesota during the 1970s, it is spring in the Red River Valley, and Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and sheriff's assistant investigator, is working as a field labourer for a local farmer — until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property's rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field labourer, and his wife are nowhere to be found, but Cash discovers their young daughter, Shawnee, cowering under a bed. The girl, a possible witness to the killing, is too terrified to speak.

In the wake of the murder, Cash can't deny her intuitive abilities. She is suspicious of the farmer's grieving widow, who offers to take Shawnee in temporarily. Cash scours the White Earth reservation for Shawnee's missing mother, desperate to find her before the girl is placed into the foster system Cash knows so well. The threat escalates when another body turns up, and Cash races against the clock to uncover the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.

Broken Fields is a compelling, atmospheric read woven with details of American Indian life in northern Minnesota, abusive farm labour practices, and women's liberation.