Where They Last Saw Her

An Ojibwe community organizer investigates the disappearances of two Indigenous women in Rendon’s powerful latest (after Sinister Graves). While running on a reservation in northern Minnesota one snowy morning, young mother Quill hears a woman’s piercing scream in the woods. After rushing to check out the scene—first alone, then with the help of a tribal cop—all she turns up is an earring with familiar beadwork. Shaken, Quill casts a suspicious eye toward the oil pipeline workers who have recently been encroaching on Ojibwe territory and enlists her friends, Punk and Gaylyn, to help her inquiries. The trio’s sleuthing turns up a pattern of violence against Ojibwe women, much of it perpetrated by white patrons at the local casino. The stakes are further raised when a second woman goes missing and Punk abruptly cuts contact with Quill and Gaylyn. Rendon’s keen ear for the rhythms of Indigenous speech and Midwestern slang lends authenticity to her tense, wrenching portrait of life on the margins. Add in solid thrills and a conclusion that leaves readers with just the right number of unanswered questions, and Rendon has delivered a top-shelf crime story that doubles as a moving testament to Native American resilience. Agent: Jacqui Lipton, Tobias Literary. (Sept.)