Marcie R. Rendon
Author of Murder on the Red River
About the Author
Image credit: Photo Source: https://www.marcierendon.com/bio
Series
Works by Marcie R. Rendon
Mahnomen 1 copy
Associated Works
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (2023) — Contributor — 1,548 copies, 23 reviews
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020) — Contributor — 372 copies, 4 reviews
Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America (1997) — Contributor — 182 copies, 1 review
A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women (1984) — Contributor — 165 copies
Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry (2021) — Contributor — 112 copies, 3 reviews
So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (2023) — Contributor — 42 copies
We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (2021) — Contributor — 32 copies, 2 reviews
The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women (1993) — Contributor — 31 copies
What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color (2019) — Contributor — 27 copies, 2 reviews
Sinister Wisdom 22/23: A Gathering of Spirit: North American Indian Women's Issue (1983) — Contributor — 20 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1952
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Moorhead State University, Moorhead, Minnesota, USA (BA)
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota (MA) - Short biography
- Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, author, playwright, poet, and freelance writer. Also a community arts activist, Rendon supports other native artists / writers / creators to pursue their art, and is a speaker for colleges and community groups on Native issues, leadership, writing.
She is an award-winning author of a fresh new murder mystery series, and also has an extensive body of fiction and nonfiction works.
The creative mind behind Raving Native Theater, Rendon has also curated community created performances such as Art Is… Creative Native Resilience, featuring three Anishinaabe performance artists, which premiered on TPT (Twin Cities Public Television), June 2019.
Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by MN AARP and POLLEN in 2018. Rendon and Diego Vazquez received a 2017 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for their work with women incarcerated in county jails. - Nationality
- White Earth Nation
- Birthplace
- Minnesota, USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
As the novel opens, it's early spring and Cash Blackbear is getting a ride across the flooded Red River Valley to meet with Sheriff Wheaton, her friend and former guardian, who needs her help identifying a native woman found dead. Cash is Ojibwe and can ask around the White Earth reservation to see what she can learn. Her inquiries lead her to a charismatic church out on the prairie led by a handsome pastor. There's something wrong, there. Cash sees a dark shadow lurking around the nearby show more cemetery where two graves raise questions. Another one of Wheaton's Ojibwe proteges names the dark shadow and takes her to a woman who can provide protective medicine. Clearly something bad is going on at that church and Cash is going to find out what it is.
I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery, the third in a series but the first I have read. Cash is an interesting figure, raised in abusive foster homes, straddling the White Earth and white communities as she plays pool, takes college classes, and drinks beer. The pacing is amiable and builds slowly to a dramatic resolution, tapering off afterward, keeping Cash's story well braided with the mystery plot. The style of writing is deceptively flat, like the landscape, but its matter-of-factness is never clumsy or inelegant. It fits Cash's straightforward character and pairs interestingly with the elements that are supernatural, but feel natural. I especially appreciated that the author doesn't pause to explain things to white folks; it's Cash's story, on her terms. I'm glad Soho is reissuing the previous books in the series and hope it will bring Rendon a larger audience. show less
I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery, the third in a series but the first I have read. Cash is an interesting figure, raised in abusive foster homes, straddling the White Earth and white communities as she plays pool, takes college classes, and drinks beer. The pacing is amiable and builds slowly to a dramatic resolution, tapering off afterward, keeping Cash's story well braided with the mystery plot. The style of writing is deceptively flat, like the landscape, but its matter-of-factness is never clumsy or inelegant. It fits Cash's straightforward character and pairs interestingly with the elements that are supernatural, but feel natural. I especially appreciated that the author doesn't pause to explain things to white folks; it's Cash's story, on her terms. I'm glad Soho is reissuing the previous books in the series and hope it will bring Rendon a larger audience. show less
If you want to read and learn about another culture's experiences, I highly recommend that you find Marcie R. Rendon's Cash Blackbear mysteries. You will be taken straight into the life of a young Native American girl in 1970s North Dakota and Minnesota. You will learn what commonly happened to Native Americans at this time and how their lives and hopes and dreams were (almost always) warped by the experiences.
In this second Cash Blackbear mystery, Rendon shines a light on the Indian show more Adoption Project that was in effect from 1941 to 1967 as well as the plight of missing and murdered indigenous women that still haunts the country to this day. Cash's brother, Mo, is full of surprises and shows us how life was for many returned Vietnam veterans. I think the best part of Girl Gone Missing for me-- outside of the brilliant characterization of Cash herself-- was learning more about her friend and guardian, Sheriff Wheaton. His backstory and motivations make him even more special.
There is an inevitability to Girl Gone Missing that is compelling. Even though the missing girls are young and white and blond and blue-eyed, readers feel that Cash will be the exception to the rule... and they will also feel that she will be able to survive whatever experience follows. How she does it is true to her indomitable spirit. No matter how many times she's knocked down, no matter how many times she tells herself not to wish for anything, this young woman will not give up, and I for one will always cheer her on.
The third book in the series, Sinister Graves, will be released in October. I can't wait. Without a doubt, Rendon's Cash Blackbear mysteries are my favorite finds of 2022. Do yourself a favor and grab the first one, Murder on the Red River. How these books can be so bleak yet so full of hope, I'll never know. But I do know that Marcie R. Rendon is an incredibly talented writer, and I want to read more. show less
In this second Cash Blackbear mystery, Rendon shines a light on the Indian show more Adoption Project that was in effect from 1941 to 1967 as well as the plight of missing and murdered indigenous women that still haunts the country to this day. Cash's brother, Mo, is full of surprises and shows us how life was for many returned Vietnam veterans. I think the best part of Girl Gone Missing for me-- outside of the brilliant characterization of Cash herself-- was learning more about her friend and guardian, Sheriff Wheaton. His backstory and motivations make him even more special.
There is an inevitability to Girl Gone Missing that is compelling. Even though the missing girls are young and white and blond and blue-eyed, readers feel that Cash will be the exception to the rule... and they will also feel that she will be able to survive whatever experience follows. How she does it is true to her indomitable spirit. No matter how many times she's knocked down, no matter how many times she tells herself not to wish for anything, this young woman will not give up, and I for one will always cheer her on.
The third book in the series, Sinister Graves, will be released in October. I can't wait. Without a doubt, Rendon's Cash Blackbear mysteries are my favorite finds of 2022. Do yourself a favor and grab the first one, Murder on the Red River. How these books can be so bleak yet so full of hope, I'll never know. But I do know that Marcie R. Rendon is an incredibly talented writer, and I want to read more. show less
This third Cash Blackbear outing is the best so far. It's been a while since a book kept me reading almost to the exclusion of everything else, and I've missed that feeling. Sheriff Wheaton asks Cash to venture out through spring flood waters to his office, to see what she would make of an unidentified body that had floated into the town of Ada on the the overflowing river. This requires finding someone with a boat and the skill to navigate the still turbulent water that has covered most of show more the roadways in the area. Cash often "knows things", and Wheaton trusts her intuition. With only one deputy, he is always short-handed when something out of the ordinary comes up, and calls on Cash frequently for unofficial assistance in his investigations. After viewing the body, Cash is certain that the woman is Indian, so between her college classes she heads for the White Earth reservation to see if anyone knows anything about a missing woman. In her travels, she learns about a country church with a charismatic pastor who has developed quite a following among young Indian women through his assistance with a GED program. It seems like a good place to make inquiries, and sure enough, it turns out one of the women who had been a regular attendee hasn't been seen at church in a while. And the church is the same one where Cash had by chance come upon recent graves of two babies at the end of [Girl Gone Missing]. After meeting the pastor and his wife, Cash finds herself both drawn in and repelled by them; and she cannot let the mystery of those lost infants alone, especially as she so often gets one of her visions---a shapeless dark threatening form hovering nearby--when she is in the vicinity. There's a lot of substance to this story; Cash begins to make new friends, and to interact socially more with her peers. We see her maturing gradually through little changes in her behavior and outlook, as she begins to realize her wretched past does not necessarily need to define her future. The writing style quibbles I had with the previous book have vanished; it's almost as though a different person had written this one, or maybe the same person had written [Girl Gone Missing] 20 years before writing [Sinister Graves]. I'm hooked on Rendon now. There isn't another Cash Blackbear book out there...yet. I'm pretty sure there will be, and I can't wait. show less
The first Cash Blackbear mystery introduces a fascinating character. Renee Blackbear, nicknamed Cash, is a Native American teen who was placed in the foster care system when her mother had a car accident while drunk. She's been moved from one farm family to another all around the Moorhead area. She began working - for Cash - when she was just eleven and emancipated herself from an especially nasty foster home at the age of thirteen with the help of the local sheriff who fills the role of show more guardian and mentor.
Cash's life consists of working on various farms, smoking, drinking beer, and shooting pool. Every once in a while, she gets a vision that helps Sheriff Wheaton solve a crime or two. This latest crime concerns the death of a Native man who had come down from the Leech Lake reservation to earn some cash to help his family through the winter. Her visions lead her to the reservation where she meets his wife and some of his seven kids. Snooping around in the local Fargo-Moorehead bars lets her overhear some guys talking about the guy's death. After another death, this time of a white guy, Cash overhears enough to point Sheriff Wheaton to the bad guys but not before they kidnap her and threaten to murder her.
This was a gritty sort of mystery filled with early 70s details including the pervasive prejudice against Native American and the systematic attempts to destroy Native culture. Cash is a victim of it as she spent a childhood separated from her family and in a succession of foster homes very often abusive.
I really liked Cash. She was resilient and very bright. But she was also a loner who doesn't form attachments to anyone but Sheriff Wheaton. Without him pushing her to do something with her life beyond farm work, she's content to just drift.
I can't wait to read more of Cash's adventures. show less
Cash's life consists of working on various farms, smoking, drinking beer, and shooting pool. Every once in a while, she gets a vision that helps Sheriff Wheaton solve a crime or two. This latest crime concerns the death of a Native man who had come down from the Leech Lake reservation to earn some cash to help his family through the winter. Her visions lead her to the reservation where she meets his wife and some of his seven kids. Snooping around in the local Fargo-Moorehead bars lets her overhear some guys talking about the guy's death. After another death, this time of a white guy, Cash overhears enough to point Sheriff Wheaton to the bad guys but not before they kidnap her and threaten to murder her.
This was a gritty sort of mystery filled with early 70s details including the pervasive prejudice against Native American and the systematic attempts to destroy Native culture. Cash is a victim of it as she spent a childhood separated from her family and in a succession of foster homes very often abusive.
I really liked Cash. She was resilient and very bright. But she was also a loner who doesn't form attachments to anyone but Sheriff Wheaton. Without him pushing her to do something with her life beyond farm work, she's content to just drift.
I can't wait to read more of Cash's adventures. show less
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