Where They Last Saw Her

Where They Last Saw Her

A Novel

About the Book

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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Praise for Where They Last Saw Her

Praise for Where They Last Saw Her

“Rendon’s book will break your heart, but it will also inspire and inform.”Kirkus Review

“Rendon masterfully navigates the histories of trauma and brutality that continue to exist within our Native communities, laying bare the truths of colonial violence and the continuing need for closure and justice in our homelands.”—Ramona Emerson

“An expert and uncompromising storyteller, Marcie Rendon aims her extraordinary powers on a no-holds barred story that will devastate and enrage you—and renew your belief in the power of community and the strength in women’s hearts. Where They Last Saw Her is unmissable.”—Katie Gutierrez


Praise for Marcie Rendon

“To my delight I have a feeling that Rendon is only getting started.”—Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Night Watchman

“Rendon writes the way Anishinaabe people view the world—full of rich descriptions and layered storytelling.”—Angeline Boulley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter

“Rendon is a master storyteller.” —Oscar Hokeah, author of Calling for a Blanket Dance

“Heart-stopping, heartrending, and heartening, often all at the same time.”―Linda LeGarde Grover, author of The Road Back to Sweetgrass

“Powerful, textured, and haunting.”—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity

“[Rendon] is one heck of a mystery novelist.”Oprah Daily

“As a storyteller in general, Rendon is masterful.”The Circle: Native American News and Arts

“[Rendon] skillfully handles sobering social issues.”Library Journal
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About the Author

Marcie R. Rendon
Marcie R. Rendon, citizen of the White Earth Nation, is one of O: The Oprah Magazine’s 31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now and a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award winner. Her debut novel, Murder on the Red River, received the Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel Award and was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, Contemporary Novel category, and her second novel, Girl Gone Missing, was nominated for the G. P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Her script, Say Their Names, will be produced by Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. And her script Sweet Revenge had a staged reading at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The creative mind of Raving Native Theater, she curated Twin Cities Public Television’s Art Is . . . CreativeNativeResilience. Rendon received the Loft Literary Center’s Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship with co-creator Diego Vazquez for their work with incarcerated women. More by Marcie R. Rendon
Decorative Carat
Random House Group