Sierra Crane Murdoch, a journalist based in the American West, has written for Harper's, This American Life, The Atlantic, The New Yorker online, VQR, and High Country News. She has held fellowships from Middlebury College and from the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a MacDowell Fellow.
"Sierra Crane Murdoch has written a deft, compelling account of an oil field murder and the remarkable woman who made it her business to solve it. I can't stop thinking and talking about this book."--Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites
"This book is a detective story, and a good one, that
tells what happens when rootless greed collides with rooted
culture. But it's also a classic slice of American history, and a
tale of resilience in the face of remarkable trauma. Sierra Crane
Murdoch is a patient, careful, and brilliant chronicler of this
moment in time, a new voice who will add much to our literature in
the years ahead."--Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the
Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? "In Yellow Bird, oilfield
meets reservation, and readers meet a true-to-life Native sleuth
unlike any in literature. Sierra Crane Murdoch takes a modest,
ignored sort of American life and renders it large, with a murder
mystery driving the action. It's an empathetic, attentive account
by a talented writer and listener."--Ted Conover, author of
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing and Rolling Nowhere
"Journalist and first-time author Sierra Crane Murdoch follows an
Arikara woman named Lissa Yellow Bird who is determined to solve
the mystery of a missing white oil worker on the North Dakota
reservation where her family lives. The book offers a gripping
narrative of Yellow Bird's obsession with the case, but it's also
about the harsh history of the land where the man vanished, how it
was flooded and remade, first by an uncaring federal government and
then again by industry. Yellow Bird teaches us that some things
aren't random at all--that a crime, and its resolution, can be a
product of a time and a place, and a history bringing together the
people involved."--Outside magazine "Remarkable . . .
[The book's] strength derives not from vast panoramas but from an
intimate gaze. . . . I've long felt that Native communities are
perceived (by Native and non-Native people alike) as places in
America but not of America. Murdoch troubles this false separation
and helps us understand Yellow Bird and Clarke, and by extension
Native and non-Native lives, as deeply intertwined. . . . Yellow
Bird's fanatical but dignified search brought closure to Clarke's
family and change to Fort Berthold. In her telling of the story,
Murdoch brings the same fanaticism and dignity to the search for
and meaning of modern Native America."--David Treuer, The New
York Times "A great true-crime story . . . Lissa Yellow Bird is one
of the most fascinating characters I've ever read about--and she's
a real person. . . . It's Yellow Bird's incremental fight that
makes the book addictive, full of twists and turns and surprising
choices. . . . [Sierra Crane] Murdoch reports the hell out of it,
digging up text messages and conversations and business dealings
and shifts in tribal power. She also gets deep into personal
relationships and reveals their richness from all sides. It's a
remarkable accomplishment."--Los Angeles
Times
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