Sierra Crane Murdoch

(21) This is a journalist's meandering telling of a disappearance of a young man on a North Dakota reservation during the "fracking" boom of 2016. Tribal lands have turned out to sit on a wealth of oil that can be drilled from the ground and, of course, the oil companies have come to swindle the Native Americans or so the story goes. It turns out many of the people on the reservation were done wrong by their own relatives. But hey - the actual facts don't matter when we can write a nice victim story especially with the oh-so-PC concept of intergenerational trauma thrown in. Sigh. Nevertheless, the story itself is a true-crime whodunnit told from the lens of a Native American woman who is trying to put her life back together after addiction and prison. She becomes obsessed with the case and determined to solve it and put the perpetrators behind bars.

I admired Lissa who I think is a fascinating woman. Although the author admittedly was a 'biased' journalist who became Lissa's friend and allowed her input into the story, she actually did a nice job depicting Lissa as a real, flawed individual but not a victim, and not a scumbag. I enjoyed reading about her mother, Irene, and her life's trajectory as well. Strength and smarts from chaos and dysfunction. After reading this on the heels of 'We were once a Family' which detailed the horrors and chaotic lives of children in foster care, I feel like I need to just wash all the grime and filth off my skin with a Chlorox wipe. Poverty is one thing, but jeez - cruelty, violence, drugs, crime, running off and fornicating with random people and getting knocked up. What is wrong with people!!!

I thought that while some stories and people were interesting - in the end the book was a mish-mash of stories not in great chronological organization and the main thrust of the narrative kept changing. Is this about life on Native American reservations? Lissa's life story? the young man KC who disappeared? the crooked contractors who profited off the oil boom and maybe knocked-off their enemies? I dunno really - a lot of players that were hard to keep straight who kept coming in and out of the story and the same scenes seemed to be written again and again. After awhile I truly just felt petty and dirty reading about long text or Facebook page exchanges between random people. Is there a story here or not?

So mixed feelings. I was definitely motivated to finish and find out what happened but the pacing and the dramatic tension and structure of the book were a bit of a hot mess. Despite all this, I actually think there is a spark to this author's writing and some great potential. I would read her next one.… (més)