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Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country
Maybe someday
44
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
21/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Sierra Crane Murdoch
Publisher:
Random House
Date:
February 25, 2020
When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher âKCâ Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became obsessed with his case and went to great lengths to find him.
What The Reviewers Say
It’s Yellow Bird’s incremental fight that makes the book addictive, full of twists and turns and surprising choices.
... remarkable.
... a story that expertly blends true crime, environmental drama, and family saga. For a first nonfiction work, Murdoch has outdone herself by telling the story in a beautifully narrative way, allowing readers to watch the scene unfold as Lissa Yellow Bird investigates the disappearance of Kristopher 'KC' Clarke from his work site on Lissa’s tribal reservation. Murdoch’s own experiences lends perspective; her account offers no easy answers and causes readers to face the moral questions involved: resource mining on Native land, hardships caused by the signing and breaking of treaties, and the difficulties faced by everyone during an economic recession. Fans of Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark will appreciate the accessible style, precise details, fast pace, and lyrical prose.
Murdoch’s reporting is so exhaustive that it is sometimes slow going, but it’s well worth following for Murdoch’s, and Yellow Bird’s, insights into historical and contemporary Native American life..
