“We’ve been targets since the chimook arrived here. First war. Then boarding schools. Then foster homes. And Indian women have been targets all the way back since Pocahontas and Sacajawea. Teenage girls taken and used. Women taken and used.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Where They Last Saw Her
Quill, a Native American woman who has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her entire life, is no stranger to what happens to people who look like her. Missing and murdered Indigenous women infiltrate Quill’s life on a daily basis. Violence is also prominent in her community. When she was young, a local man named Jimmy Sky jumped to his death off the railway bridge. Quill ran for help and has been running ever since. On an early morning training run through the woods, she is stopped short by a scream. Shaken to her core, Quill investigates the area, but only finds tire tracks, signs of a scuffle, and a single beaded earring. No sign of whomever screamed.
Determined to learn more about what happened in the woods that day, Quill enlists the help of two friends, Punk and Gaylen, to help her find the truth. When another woman is assaulted and a third is stolen, the three women are convinced that the group of men working pipeline construction just north of the reservation are responsible. When a fourth women goes missing, Quill hits her limit. Who is behind this? Why is this happening? Quill puts everything she holds dear on the line to find these women and the answers her community desperately needs.
When They Last Saw Her had me hooked from the very first page. It was dark and captivating while also dealing with critical social issues in a sensitive way. Readers will be pulled into the world of missing and murdered indigenous women, how communities are deeply affected by this, and what they are doing to address the injustices they face on a daily basis.
