Sinister Graves (A Cash Blackbear Mystery, Band 3) - Hardcover

Rendon, Marcie R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1641293837 ISBN 13: 9781641293839

Verlag: Soho Crime, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

"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

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 hymn written in English and Ojibwe.

Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old, tough-as-nails Ojibwe woman, sometimes uses her special abilities to help Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, with his investigations. When Cash sees the hymn, she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will lead her somewhere she hasn’t been in over a decade: 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,” she is pulled into the lives of the pastor and his wife while yet another Native woman turns up dead and her newborn is nowhere to be found.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marcie Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, a Pinckley Prize-winning author, playwright, poet, freelance writer, and a community arts activist. Rendon was awarded the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award for 2020. She is a speaker on Native issues, leadership, and writing. Her second novel in her Cash Blackbear mystery series, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by Minneapolis AARP and Pollen in 2018. She lives in Minneapolis.


 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Cash sat in a battered fishing boat on murky floodwater that was headed to the Red River. The spring flood covered the Valley as far to the east and west as she could see. Schools had closed. No one could get to church to pray. The prehistoric, glacial Lake Agassiz existed once again. What had been plowed fields of wheat and corn, soybeans and oats, potatoes and sugar beets were now an ice-cold, snow-melt lake. Sixty miles wide, from one side of the valley to the other.
     Cash took a break from oaring, removed a mitten and dipped her hand in the frigid water. If you got caught in the floodwaters, the freezing temperatures would kill you as fast, or faster, than the rushing water. She quickly pulled her hand back out, cupped it near her mouth, and blew warm air over her fingers. Even bundled up in a winter jacket, scarf, mittens and a stocking cap pulled low over her ears, she still shivered in the cold.
     Al, a friend of a friend of one of the regular drinkers at the Casbah bar, was sitting in the rear of the boat. Cash carefully turned around on the seat, so she was facing him. He wasn’t bad looking. His hair wasn’t as long as a hippie’s, but not a short farmer buzz either. His skin said Indian. Cash guessed he was a Vietnam vet.
     As Al navigated the floodwaters, he would either drop the small motor into the water to move them along faster or bring the motor up when the water was too shallow. At that point, he would oar with her.
     Just a week ago, the Red River Valley had been snow-covered. It had been a long winter with whiteout snowstorms that left four-foot road drifts and piles of snow taller than the haystacks in the fields. Then there was one day warm enough for snowmelt. That’s all it took—one day in the valley at forty degrees, followed by three more days with temperatures that didn’t drop below freezing.
     The Wild Rice River, with its headwaters on the far eastern shore of the ancient Lake Agassiz, carried the snowmelt down into the Valley. And when the Wild Rice, along with a hundred other small tributaries, rapidly flooded their banks, all the water moved in a murky rush to spill across the fields of the Valley, the farms and towns, to join the muddy red snake that ran to the north.
     Farmers had scrambled to sandbag their barns to keep their cows safe before moving to bag their own homes. Then they rode tractors into town to fill more bags to lay around the perimeters of the small towns; the huge tractor tires kept their bodies safe above the floodwaters.
     Cash had spent eleven hours the day before throwing sandbags with a chain of humans—one end filled bags with sand, then ten to fifteen people passed the full bags to those at the end of the line, who laid the sandbags like bricks to create a dike in order to keep the river from flooding downtown Fargo. It was a rush against the forces of nature.
     It happened almost every year with the snowmelt. The only questions ever asked were how high would the water rise and how long would it stay. This year was one for the records. Water rose and rose. It overflowed the riverbanks, filled the fields, crept into barns and homes, and the streets of the towns that didn’t sandbag fast enough. The floodwaters covered the land from the Red River Valley to Lake Winnipeg, way up north in Manitoba. Farmers prayed for the water to recede in days, not weeks.
     When Cash had arrived home after helping fill sandbags, she was so bone-weary she flopped into bed without getting undressed and didn’t wake until the incessant ringing of her landline woke her. No one except Wheaton ever called. What few friends she had, had given up on her ever answering her phone. Most just dropped by and hollered up at her apartment. Or made the journey up the flight of stairs and knocked. But that early morning phone call rang and rang. It had stopped briefly, then started ringing again.
     Cash finally pushed herself off the bed and stumbled to the kitchen, where the beige rotary phone sat on the counter. She picked up the handset. “Yeah?”
     “Cash, it’s Wheaton. What are you doing?”
     “Sleeping. There’s a flood out there.”
     Silence.
     “What?”
     “We have a body here that floated into town.”
     Silence.
     “Where?”
     “Ada.”
     “Highway 75 is flooded. I don’t even know if I can get over to Moorhead. Last night, they were saying the river might crest over the bridges in downtown.”
     “Maybe someone’s got a boat that could get you out here.”
     More silence.
     “You’d have to follow the road up. Stay away from the river. River’s going too fast to try and get on. Maybe a boat with a motor could get you up Highway 75 or 9—9 might be safer. Water’s not as deep, and there really is no current. The water is just sitting on the fields, waiting for the river to empty up north.”
     Cash had leaned her head against the counter. Her waist-length braid slid over one shoulder. Even though she worked out each week in the judo class at the university, the muscles in her arm holding the phone had been sore from moving sandbags all day. She pulled the headset away from her ear and stared at it.
     “Cash?”
     “Yeah. Okay.” She hung up.
     The phone rang again.
     “Cash?”
     “What?”
     “You hung up. Are you coming?”
     “I said okay.” And she hung up again.
 
 
It had taken some doing and a promise of a twelve-pack, but she finally found someone—Al—to ferry her the forty-five miles north. The sky was overcast. The last thing the Valley needed was snow or rain. The clouds didn’t look like they were ready to drop any more moisture, but they created a gray mass moving to the east above the muddy floodwater. A depressing, cold day no matter how you looked at it. Occasionally, the small boat had to fight the moving current but, mostly, it was an easy ride traveling north.
     Al navigated through the flood-filled ditch along Highway 9. The murky water was about a foot over the pavement, but she could still see the white road lines. Al lifted the motor and he and Cash used the oars to bring the boat to land where the highway met the floodwaters. Al, who was wearing wading boots, jumped out and pulled the boat up and out of the water. He tied it to a highway sign, and they walked the few blocks into town. Al to the local bar, and Cash to the jail.
     Wheaton, the county sheriff, was sitting at his desk, his dog, Gunner, lying at his feet. Gunner ignored Cash’s entrance. A few months back Wheaton had seen a gunny sack running down a gravel road, which ended up holding a small black mutt inside—probably a mix between a German shepherd and a Lab. Now, Wheaton and the dog were inseparable. Cash was certain the dog resented her presence in Wheaton’s life.
     Wheaton was eating half a roast beef sandwich. He held the uneaten half up in her direction....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Crime
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1641293837
• ISBN 13: 9781641293839
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland