Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Ratings423
Average rating4.1
Chilling, sad, upsetting story. I was already fairly familiar with the general historical events but the book went into much more detail.
This is a crazy story.
Grann writes this story in a well-paced and respectful way that also manages to keep the reader hooked. I did not want to put this book down (which doesn't happen to me often) and I never read non-fiction this fast.
I am very happy that the movie is coming out soon which will encourage more people to read this incredible story and learn more about the horrific way Native Americans were (and maybe still are?) treaded.
Utterly fantastic book. The prose grips you right through, but it doesn't cheapen the horror. The scene in the courthouse.... was extraordinarily painful. I cannot even fathom it. A must read book that captures what is only a fraction of the (politically and institutionally supported) cruel treatment of first nations/native americans.
Story was a little hard to follow at times with too much jumping around and new names constantly coming in and out of the story. Reads a bit like a textbook - without any drama, suspense, or creative - while almost the full extent of the tale can be read on the back cover of the book. The few surprises or reveals don't seem to be worth the trudge and even though the corruption and conspiracy is shocking, the storytelling just never seems to get off the ground.
Read for Reading is Murder Book Club. I learned so much. Reads like a thriller, I could not put it down
The Osage of Oklahoma unexpectedly became wildly rich when the land to which the tribe had been relocated was discovered to contain a huge and valuable oilfield.
The headright each tribe member owned could not be sold. It could only be inherited. And this, along with greed and the lack of respect held for Native Americans in early twentieth-century white culture, led to a series of murders in the Osage community.
The murders themselves were horrific, but the way the murders were ignored, covered up, and minimized was just as horrific.
This is yet another story from history that I was never told in school. It's a horrific story, and it's a story that reminds us of the horrific things minority cultures in America have had to endure.
Killers of the Flower Moon tells another part of Native American history that I had never heard about: the time in the late 19th and early 20th century when Osage people turned out to own the rights to the oil found in what the US government had thought were the barren hills of Oklahoma, and became millionaires, and then became targets for murder by vicious whites who wanted their money. This is a well written page turner for a mystery lover, but it's horrifying and absolutely heartbreaking because it's true. The trauma that a generation of people endured when their relatives and loved ones were murdered is still present in the conversations that their grandchildren have with the author. Read this book, but brace yourself for deep sadness. There are notes for each chapter at the end of the book, a list of unpublished sources, and a bibliography.
Update: I want to also mention that this book has a perspective on the development of the FBI as a federal law enforcement agency that is fascinating. According to the author, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's focus on making the FBI (and by association, himself) look like heroes led to a job only half done, and many Osage families were left with grief and unanswered questions about what happened to their relatives.
The first three quarters of Killers of the Flower moon play out as a fascinating true-crime historical novel, as Grann pieces together the details of a long-buried series of brutal murders perpetrated by a psychotically evil white man against the residents of an Oklahoma Indian Reservation which in the early 20th century contained one of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States. One investigator tries to do the case right but is ultimately impeded by the structures of white supremacy on the ground in Oklahoma and the bureaucratic machinery of the newly born FBI who had commissioned him. The details of the murders, which were performed in order to consolidate oil head rights which could only otherwise be passed hereditarily are grisly and horrifying in their ruthlessness, but the book ends on a genuinely stomach churning final act wherein the scale and scope of such murders becomes apparent, if not yet (even in 2022) totally clear.
Great book. I liked how it's split into three sections: the first is basically a history of the Osage and the many trials and hardships wrongly imposed upon them. The second focuses on the FBI's investigation into the murders, which would put just about any mystery novelist to shame with all the ups and downs and twists and turns. Lastly, the third section is about David Grann's visit to Osage land and how his own investigations unexpectedly turns up evidence that the crimes against the Osage were much, much worse than what the FBI unearthed.
When truth is stranger and more tragic than fiction. Infuriating and devastating.
I think I'm ready to give up on narrative non-fiction.
I've read a few acclaimed books with this structure, such as The Lost City Of Z (also by Grann) and The Devil In The White City, and they just haven't been for me. I find the subject matter really interesting, but the storytelling just puts me off.
There's something about the suspension of disbelief when true-life scenes are described in detail combined with the book usually covering so many things that happened in real life that may or may not be interesting. With movies about real life events I immediately accept that it is fictionalized to some degree and is edited down so that each moment is crucial to the story.
Anyways, there's definitely an interesting and harrowing bit of history at the core here and I'm curious to see what Scorcese does with this for his film.
By the 1920s the Osage were the wealthiest people per capita in the world, sitting on the oil-rich sands of Oklahoma. And yet they were not deemed competent enough to spend their own money so the federal government magnanimously appointed legal and financial guardians for them. Almost all white. Naturally this went about as well as one might expect.
Between 1921-25 dozens of members of the Osage tribe were murdered, shot execution style, poisoned and blown-up. It was an era when law enforcement barely existed and forensic science would be years away. The then sheriff of Osage County weighed in at 300 pounds and was known to be friendly with bootleggers and gamblers. Questionable sheriffs and shoddy investigative practices were hardly a viable recourse to justice.
Meanwhile in 1924 J. Edgar Hoover was appointed the director of the FBI. He would argue the need for a national police force. Enlisting former Texas Ranger Tom White to put together a team and uncover the root of this Reign of Terror in Osage County, Hoover hoped for an early win for his nascent FBI.
It was a Herculean task. Corruption was everywhere and it was impossible to know who was liable to double-cross you or steer you astray. The sheer amount of money on the line motivated numerous crimes and betrayals and it seemed those on the take would stop at nothing to keep their long running grift going.
So it should have been more gripping. We've got private eyes and bootleggers, safecrackers and explosives experts, cowboys and conmen peopling the pages. But it's trying to do too much with too many characters and keeps jumping all over the place. And then when it seemed like we could chalk up a win for the FBI, the story continues with author Grann inserting himself into the narrative. He would go on to uncover hundreds more potential deaths through dogged research and digging in the library but by that time it felt like we'd long overstayed our time at the party.
One sentence synopsis... After oil deposits were found under their land, several Osage Native Americans mysteriously started dying and the newly formed FBI took the case.
Read it if you like... real-life murder mysteries like ‘I'll Be Gone in the Dark' or ‘The Devil in the White City'. The true story is captivating but Grann's writing is more dry journalism than sensational storytelling.
Dream casting... Scorsese is adapting with De Niro (presumably as the mastermind behind the murders) and DiCaprio (as Agent White, the FBI investigator).
Very readable account of a murder spree in the '20s of members of the Osage Indian nation, presumably motivated by their oil wealth. It also deals with the early days of J. Edgar Hoover's administration of the FBI.
This was impossible to put down. A True Crime expose on a string of terrible crimes in Native American territory that gave way to the inception of the FBI.
Obviously well researched and an important history but I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrators' readings were overly dramatic and distracting. Would not recommend the audiobook.
Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this examination of the systematic murder of dozens of Osage in the 1920s is chilling. Rarely do we have the opportunity to see the American genocide against indigenous people so closely with personal detail about the victims and the generational trauma that follows their descendants to this day. The history of the birth of the modern FBI and the investigation and judicial proceedings against the murderers was fascinating.
