Marcie Rendon

Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman and occasional sleuth, is back on the case after a man is found dead on a rural Minnesota farm in the next installment of the acclaimed Native crime series.

Minnesota, 1970s: It’s spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing fieldwork for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The tenant, a Native field laborer, 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 in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash is scouring White Earth Reservation for Shawnee’s missing mother—whom Cash wants to find before the girl is put in the foster system—another body turns up. Concerned by the escalating threat, Cash races against the clock to figure out 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 labor practices and women’s liberation.

Reviews
“A tragic, unforgiving crime novel that emphasizes the perils of the foster care system for Indigenous children.”—Library Journal, Starred Review

“Peyton Place meets Fargo in this clipped tale of misdoings in the Red River Valley . . . Rendon explor[es] the ways the deck is stacked against Cash because she’s a woman, an Ojibwe, and a maverick with limited respect for white men’s rules.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Rendon excels at balancing plot and character, taking time to probe Cash’s psychology while orchestrating a deliciously complicated mystery for her to solve. Readers will be rapt.”—Publishers Weekly

“Outstanding . . . Rendon delivers lots of suspense; a resourceful, rural community-smart heroine in Cash; and wrenching insights into the overt and covert racism endured by Indigenous people.”—Booklist

Series Information
This is the fourth book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon. 

Additional Information
272 pages | 5.83" x 8.60" | Hardcover 

Marcie R. Rendon’s follow-up to Murder on the Red River finds Cash helping Sheriff Wheaton solve a murder that has likeness to the cases of missing and murdered Native women.

Cash is off to a local college with the help of Wheaton, who wants her to take hold of her life and aspire to better things. At Moorhead State she sees that people talk a lot but mostly about nothing, not like the men in the fields she’s known all her life, who hold the rich topsoil in their hands, talk fertilizer and weather and prices on the Grain Exchange.

In between classes and hauling beets, drinking beer and shooting pool, she begins to dream of the Cities and blonde Scandinavian girls calling for help.

Reviews
"Rendon is a natural storyteller and a consummate writer, and we’re indebted to Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso for bringing the unforgettable Cash Blackbear to life. There isn’t a protagonist in recent fiction with the bearing of Rendon’s creation, and we’re the better for knowing her."—Jeffrey Mannix

"I won’t recount the terror, the drama, and the bravery of what follows. You can read the book yourself. The ending, I’ll just say, is deeply satisfying. Rendon has been working for years in the prisons with women who are incarcerated for prostitution, soliciting, and other offenses. Teaching them to tell their stories and access their inner writing voice. She’s able to convey the savagery of the system, what it does to women and their families, how deeply it is connected to poverty, and how it reaches into white rural and suburban areas as well as communities of color." —Ann Markusen, Grand Rapids Herald-Review

"Darn that Marcie Rendon but she did it again. She wrote another book featuring Renee “Cash” Blackbear which invariably led to non-stop, compulsive reading and thoughts about the 19-year-old protagonist...This is a good book. If you read it, block out uninterrupted time. It’s hard to put down."—Deborah Locke,The Circle News: Native American News and Arts

"The vivid writing and keen eye keep the pages turning and readers hoping for another book in this series."—Wendy J. Fox, Buzzfeed

"Rendon's refreshing sequel to 2017's Murder on the Red River...When [Cash] hears about a missing coed, she contacts [Sheriff] Wheaton. Since they previously worked together successfully on a murder, Wheaton trusts Cash’s sharp instincts and asks for her help in solving the case...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."—Publishers Weekly

"In her second outing, Cash Blackbear goes off to college and finds herself embroiled in the mystery of a missing classmate. 'I'm not used to folks treating me like I'm stupid,' says Cash. But Moorhead State is another world, one slow to disclose the secrets of its initiated."—Kirkus Reviews

Series Information
This is the second book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon.  

Additional Information
336 pages | 5.51" x 8.26" | Paperback

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.

Reviews
“More of a coming of age story than a mystery … the spare prose-poetry of her descriptions and dialogue is a lot more interesting than anything she has to say about crime or detection.”—Kirkus Reviews

“An appealing 19-year-old heroine, Renee 'Cash' Blackbear, lifts [Marcie] Rendon’s first mystery.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Rendon] is one heck of a mystery novelist. Rendon’s Cash Blackbear books are gripping vehicles that tell broader stories about the historical persecution of American Indians.”—Oprah Daily

Series Information
This is the first book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon.

Additional Information
320 pages | 5.52" x 8.22" | Paperback

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.

Reviews
“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, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Night Watchman

Series Information
This is the third book in the Cash Blackbear Mystery series from author Marcie Rendon. 

Additional Information
240 pages | 5.50" x 8.23" | Paperback 

From the award-winning author of the Cash Blackbear series comes a compelling novel of a Native American woman who learns of the disappearance of one of her own and decides enough is enough.

All they heard was her scream.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring.

Things are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don’t know what it means to quit; her loving husband, Crow, and their two beautiful children challenge her to be better every day. So when she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it—starting with investigating the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.

As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible.

Reviews
“Rendon’s book will break your heart, but it will also inspire and inform.”—Kirkus Review

“Rendon masterfully navigates the histories of trauma and brutality that continue to exist within our Native communities, laying bare the truths of colonial violence and the continuing need for closure and justice in our homelands.”—Ramona Emerson, author of Shutter

“An expert and uncompromising storyteller, Marcie Rendon aims her extraordinary powers on a no-holds barred story that will devastate and enrage you—and renew your belief in the power of community and the strength in women’s hearts. Where They Last Saw Her is unmissable.”—Katie Gutierrez, bestselling author of More Than You’ll Ever Know

Additional Information
336 Pages | 5.5" x 8.25" | Paperback

“Noozhishenh, bimadiziwin,” Nookomis says. “My granddaughter, live a good life.”

An Ojibwe grandmother carefully measures and selects just the right colors of fabric, and her sewing machine hums whirr, whirr, whirr late into the night.

In the morning, her growing granddaughter has a beautiful new ribbon skirt to wear, a reminder of her nookomis and the cultural traditions that stitch together her family with love.

This heartwarming story by Marcie Rendon (Ojibwe), with stunning illustrations by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley (Ojibwe), celebrates the power of Indigenous craft and community and weaves together the spirit of resilience, female empowerment, and gratitude for the generations that came before us.

Reviews
A radiant and joyful glimpse at an important Native tradition."  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Tradition and love are the core of this picture book...Ojibwe language is seamlessly woven into the dialogue. The digital art fully saturates the pages, layering textures and colors much like the ribbon skirts, and the palette is buoyant and bright, exuding a celebratory feel." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Book"s

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 4 to 8.

Detailed text perfect for read-alouds.

Backmatter includes a glossary of Ojibwa terms, more information on ribbon skirts, including history and significance, and infromation about manoomin (wild rice).

Additional Information
40 pages | 8.50" x 11.00" | Hardcover