Book cover of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

Book description

The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism.
 
“I don’t know a more complicated, original protagonist in literature than Lissa Yellow Bird, or a more dogged reporter in American journalism…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Yellow Bird as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

As a former novelist, I'm especially alert to characters in nonfiction who are as vivid and complex as anything a writer of fiction can invent.

Sierra Crane Murdoch gives us just that in the story of Lissa Yellow Bird, an Arikara woman who, after her release from prison in 2009, becomes obsessed with investigating the recent disappearance of a white oil industry worker from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

Lissa is a human dynamo – resourceful, quick-witted, sometimes charming, sometimes troublesome, and unrelentingly persistent: truly one of the most memorable characters you're likely to meet in contemporary fiction or nonfiction.

If you love Yellow Bird...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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