Where They Last Saw Her
Ratings7
Average rating3.7
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.
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Overall, the book was okay. The protagonist is a bit annoying, but some of the supporting characters (her friends) help out a lot. I have two issues with the book.
1. All the men in this book are incompetent, weak, and/or bad. You can make a book about strong women without making all the men weak.
2. The protagonist is the hero, but most of her actions
seem unrealistic.
Marcie Rendon has become a go-to author for me when I want a good thriller. This novel did not surprise me with the whodunnit, but it did keep me guessing until the end whether or not Quill would figure it out without another bad thing happening. Love all the characters and the glimpse into life on a reservation, and absolutely applaud her efforts to bring more awareness to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Will always recommend this author.
I had read a short story by this author and liked their writing enough that I had wanted to pick up another of their books. This was not a bad place to start.
The story itself is captivating and gets though the suffocating helplessness that many feel when the authorities just don’t care. The main characters are interesting, and I liked the feeling of community though out the book although I would have liked to spend more time with some of them.
I feel like the book missed out on really pulling depth out of the characters. We get a lot of the main character telling us she likes to run, but it backs out of any further developments. This cuts some of the emotional connection the readers could have had to the characters. This could have been an excellent book if we got to know more about the main characters and their lives/motivations. The book does at times add too much detail. We get a lot of descriptions about what people are physically doing that aren’t needed.
Despite what the book missed the story is good and the main character was a driving force that kept me engaged. When I have time, I would like to read another book by this author.
