Murder on the Red River

Marcie Rendon uses language sparingly, perhaps because her main character, Cash, only has more than a few syllables for the few humans she trusts most. And who can blame a young woman dragged through the 1960's foster system in rural Minnesota where indigenous children were treated worse than many of the farm animals the children cared for? How much can a person communicate when most of the people you run into hit you with racial slurs, sexism, and come-ons?

The repetition of Cash's day-to-day existence (wake up, smoke, work, drink beer, play pool, rinse, repeat) might seem dull unless you consider that Cash is young, hard-working, and doesn't have much. When I was first on my own, the days were sometimes like Cash's because I didn't have much money to do the things I could afford by my later twenties.and if you're a young woman who believes her future will be no different than today, then the long barrel of same, same, same makes sense.

The resolution to the murder at the center of the story seemed a little too easy to figure out, but the story of the Day Dodge family was really heartbreaking and sticks with me after the book ended.