Marcie R. Rendon, author of the powerful novel Where They Last Saw Her, brings back her series character, Cash Blackbear, in a another traumatic, thought-provoking mystery, Broken Fields. This time, it’s Cash and a young Native girl who suffer through current issues, and memories of the past.
It’s spring in Minnesota’s Red River Valley, and Cash is making extra money plowing fields. But, when she notices a car running all day in front of a farmhouse, she finally investigates. In the kitchen, she finds the body of Bud Borgerud, the owner. He’s been shot to death, and his Native tenants, a husband and wife, are missing. Cash feels uneasy enough to search the house, and finds Shawnee, the couple’s daughter, hiding under a bed. The young girl seems in shock. She won’t talk, and Cash suspects she may have seen the killer.
Although Cash calls Wheaton, the local sheriff, and a friend, she’s angry when he insists he has to turn Shawnee over to Child Services. For years, Cash suffered through the foster care system, and she worries about Shawnee, especially when Jean Borgerud, widow of the dead farmer, insists on taking the child. Wheaton may try to shut her out of the case, and out of the investigation of a bank robbery, but Cash’s special intuition, her gift, tells her there’s more trouble in both cases.
When a second body is found on Borgerud’s farm, Cash’s primary worry is for Shawnee. She knows firsthand the trauma and problems that occur in the foster care system, and Jean Borgerud doesn’t seem the motherly type. Cash heads to the White Earth Reservation, searching for Shawnee’s missing mother, but all along she’s determined to find answers for the young girl that reminds Cash so much of herself when she was trapped with uncaring adults.
Broken Fields is a murder mystery, but it’s also an indictment of the foster care system, and the traumas inflicted on Indigenous children. It isn’t often we see Cash Blackbear break down, but her own past comes back to haunt her when she tries to help another child trapped in the system. Cash’s reactions in this book are as impulsive as ever, but her deep scars are evident in this latest story.
Marcie R. Rendon’s website is https://www.marcierendon.com/.
Broken Fields by Marcie R. Rendon. Soho Press, 2025. ISBN 9781641296588 (hardcover), 272p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley through NetGalley in order to review it for a journal.
Sounds very good. I think I’ll start with Where They Last Saw Her, though. I should have written that first one down when you reviewed it.
Where They Last Saw her is a standalone, Kim. The first in the Cash Blackbear series is Murder on the Red River.
I was going to say, it sounds really good, then I saw Kim’s post!! In a couple of weeks, I am going to go hunting at the local half price books store and I have added her to my list of authors to look for.
And, I don’t think the print will be too small for you, Carol.