Favorite 2017 Reads: No. 2

Killers of the Flower Moon was a book crafted, it seemed, to appeal especially to me. It featured true crime, Native American history and was set in the West. And apparently I wasn’t the only person David Grann’s tale appealed to. It racked up an impressive list of honors.

Killers explores a series of deaths among members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Members of the tribe were wealthy, thanks to the discovery of oil on their land. But with their wealth came desperate attempts to control them and their estates. Even those who tried to investigate the murders became targets. Eventually, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved.

The book reads as great whodunit, but it’s also a grim reminder of the racism that governed the country’s treatment of Native Americans for centuries.

 

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