‘Murder On The Red River‘ is vivid, realistic and beautifully written. It’s a personal story of trauma and survival, disclosed around the investigation of a killing. The focus of the storytelling is not on the killing or even on finding the people who did the killing but on immersing the reader into the world of Renee “Cash” Blackbear, a nineteen-year-old Ojibwe woman making her living driving trucks for farmers in the Red River Valley in the 1970s. 

We get to see the world as Cash sees it. We learn how she deals with the world and what she expects from it and, as she informally investigates the killing of an unidentified Native American man who was a long way from home, we learn about the childhood she had, being shifted from white foster home to white foster home and of the friendship she built with the local Sherriff, the only person who took any real interest in her welfare when she was a child. 

The first thing we learn about Cash is that she’s doing more than surviving. Her mind and her imagination are engaged with the world. We meet her as she walks into a local bar at the end of a long shift and her mind is as much on poetry as it is on the drinks she’ll soon be winning as she dominates the pool table in the bar she thinks of as her evening home.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

“Sun-drenched wheat fields. The refrain ran through Cash’s mind as she pulled open the Cashah’s screen door. She stood still. Momentarily blinded, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkened barrio,. Outside, the sun rested on the western horizon Inside the Casbah it was always night. The wooden door thunked behind her. The bar smells- stale beer, cigarette smoke, sawdust and billiard chalk- welcomed her to her evening home.

Sun-drenched wheat fields, healing rays of god’s love wash gently over me. Cash didn’t like the word god. Even in her own mind it was written in lowercased letters. What had he ever done for her? Sun-drenched wheat fields, healing rays of sun’s love… nah, didn’t work. Healing rays of god’s love– now thatworked.”

I loved this storytelling style. It was immersive, visual and emotional. There is no separation between Cash and the story. The plot isn’t just character-driven, the plot exists only as the trellis that the vine of Cash’s personality blossoms on. 

There is a plot and it’s a good one. It shows not just how a native man from a long way away might come to be killed but how the people who did it might be fairly sure that they’d get away with it. 

I liked that the killing and killers are treated as part of the landscape of Cash’s world, as expected as a sunrise and as unsurprising as a familiar horizon. Cash throws her energy into solving the crime but not because she has a need to solve a puzzle or because she wants to be at the centre of the action but because this killing and these killers are part of her world and she can’t let that pass. 

Cash is tough but not callous. She’s angry but she doesn’t let that anger consume her. She does what she needs to do and she does it well. Yet she’s aware that most of her life is still ahead of her and she’s still thinking about what she should do with it, other than drive trucks, play pool and drink a lot of beer. 

I was completely absorbed by this book. When it ended, it took a while for me to step back out of Cash’s world and he way of seeing it. 

‘Murder On The Red River‘ was Marcie Rendon’s debut novel. It was published in 2017, when she was sixty-five and already recognised as a playwright, a poet and a political activist. I think her maturity and her experience shine through in the novel. ‘Murder On The Red River‘ is a remarkable book and a stunning debut novel.

I’ve already downloaded the second book in the series, ‘Girl Gone Missing‘ (2019) and I’m looking forward to spending more time with Cash.

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