Red River Girl

Red River Girl
Author: Joanna Jolly
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2019-08-27
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0735233942

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A gripping account of the unsolved death of an Indigenous teenager, and the detective determined to find her killer, set against the backdrop of a troubled city. On August 17, 2014, the body of fifteen-year old runaway Tina Fontaine was found in Winnipeg's Red River. It was wrapped in material and weighted down with rocks. Red River Girl is a gripping account of that murder investigation and the unusual police detective who pursued the killer with every legal means at his disposal. The book, like the movie Spotlight, will chronicle the behind-the-scenes stages of a lengthy and meticulously planned investigation. It reveals characters and social tensions that bring vivid life to a story that made national headlines. Award-winning BBC reporter and documentary maker Joanna Jolly delves into the troubled life of Tina Fontaine, the half-Ojibway, half-Cree murder victim, starting with her childhood on the Sagkeeng First Nation Reserve. Tina's journey to the capital city is a harrowing one, culminating in drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and death. Aware of the reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Jolly has chronicled Tina Fontaine's life as a reminder that she was more than a statistic. Raised by her father, and then by her great-aunt, Tina was a good student. But the violent death of her father hit Tina hard. She ran away, was found and put into the care of Child and Family Services, which she also sought to escape from. That choice left her in danger. Red River Girl focuses not on the grisly event itself, but on the efforts to seek justice. In December 2015, the police charged Raymond Cormier, a drifter, with second-degree murder. Jolly's book will cover the trial, which resulted in an acquittal. The verdict caused dismay across the country. The book is not only a true crime story, but a portrait of a community where Indigenous women are disproportionately more likely to be hurt or killed. Jolly asks questions about how Indigenous women, sex workers, community leaders, and activists are fighting back to protect themselves and change perceptions. Most importantly, the book will chronicle whether Tina's family will find justice.

Murder on the Red River

Murder on the Red River
Author: Marcie R. Rendon
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1641293772

One Book, One Minnesota Selection for Summer 2021 Introducing Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman whose visions and grit help solve a brutal murder in this award-winning debut. 1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Minnesota: Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system. One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man’s weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that’s the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression.

A Dream to Follow (Return to Red River Book #1)

A Dream to Follow (Return to Red River Book #1)
Author: Lauraine Snelling
Publisher: Bethany House
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2001-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1441202811

It is 1893 and the first generation of immigrants who came to America for the promise of free land and a good life for their children have finally achieved their dreams. They labored hard on the land and now have a bountiful heritage to pass on to the next generation. However, many of the young people aren't interested in becoming farmers--they have aspirations of their own. Thorliff Bjorklund has been writing stories and plays since he was a young boy and longs to attend college to study journalism. But his father has other plans for him and refuses to agree. Thorliff is torn between love for his father and the pull of his dream. Must he choose between the two?

Girl Gone Missing

Girl Gone Missing
Author: Marcie R. Rendon
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1641293799

Nineteen-year-old Cash Blackbear helps law enforcement solve the mysterious disappearance of a local girl from Minnesota's Red River Valley. 1970s, Fargo-Moorhead: it’s the tail end of the age of peace and love, but Cash Blackbear isn’t feeling it. Bored by her freshman classes at Moorhead State College, Cash just wants to play pool, learn judo, chain-smoke, and be left alone. But when one of Cash’s classmates vanishes without a trace, Cash, whose dreams have revealed dangerous realities in the past, can’t stop envisioning terrified girls begging for help. Things become even more intense when an unexpected houseguest starts crashing in her living room: a brother she didn’t even know was alive, from whom she was separated when they were taken from the Ojibwe White Earth Reservation as children and forced into foster care. When Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian and friend, asks for Cash’s help with the case of the missing girl, she must override her apprehension about leaving her hometown—and her rule to never get in somebody else’s car—in order to discover the truth about the girl’s whereabouts. Can she get to her before it’s too late?

An Untamed Land (Red River of the North Book #1)

An Untamed Land (Red River of the North Book #1)
Author: Lauraine Snelling
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2006-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1441203184

Proud of Their Heritage and Sustained by Their Faith, They Came to Tame a New Land She had promised herself that once they left the fjords of Norway, she would not look back. After three long years of scrimping and saving to buy tickets for their passage to America, Roald and Ingeborg Bjorklund, along with their son, Thorliff, finally arrive at the docks of New York City. It was the promise of free land that fed their dream and lured them from their beloved home high above the fjords of Norway in 1880. Together with Roald's brother Carl and his family, they will build a good life in a new land that promises untold wealth and vast farmsteads for their children. As they join the throngs of countless immigrants passing through Castle Garden, they soon discover that nothing is as they had envisioned it. Appalled by the horrid stories of fellow immigrants bilked of all their money and forced to live in squalid living conditions, the Bjorklunds continue their long journey by train as far as Grand Forks. From there a covered wagon takes them into Dakota Territory, where they settle on the banks of the Red River. But there was no way for them to foresee the price they will have to pay to wrest a living from the indomitable land. The virgin prairie refuses to yield its treasure without a struggle. Will they be strong enough to overcome the hardships of that first winter?

Highway of Tears

Highway of Tears
Author: Jessica McDiarmid
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2024-05-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 150116029X

In the vein of the astonishing and eye-opening bestsellers I'll Be Gone in the Dark and The Line Becomes a River, this stunning work of investigative journalism follows a series of unsolved disappearances and murders of Indigenous women in rural British Columbia.

More Than a Dream (Return to Red River Book #3)

More Than a Dream (Return to Red River Book #3)
Author: Lauraine Snelling
Publisher: Bethany House
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2003-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1441203060

Book 3 of RETURN TO RED RIVER by bestselling author Lauraine Snelling. Thorliff's goal of becoming a writer is within reach. Working for a newspaper in Northfield, Minnesota, he is busy writing articles and stories for the Minneapolis Tribune and Harper's Magazine. But his idyllic world comes to a sudden halt when an epidemic hits the town of Blessing, North Dakota, following the Red River flood of 1897. Thorliff returns home to help family and friends recover from the aftermath of the disasters and rebuild their town. A captivating and heartwarming tale of aspiration, struggle, love, and triumph.

Pemmican Wars

Pemmican Wars
Author: Katherena Vermette
Publisher: Portage & Main Press
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2017-12-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1553797353

Echo Desjardins, a 13-year-old Métis girl adjusting to a new home and school, is struggling with loneliness while separated from her mother. Then an ordinary day in Mr. Bee’s history class turns extraordinary, and Echo’s life will never be the same. During Mr. Bee’s lecture, Echo finds herself transported to another time and place—a bison hunt on the Saskatchewan prairie—and back again to the present. In the following weeks, Echo slips back and forth in time. She visits a Métis camp, travels the old fur-trade routes, and experiences the perilous and bygone era of the Pemmican Wars. Pemmican Wars is the first graphic novel in a new series, A Girl Called Echo, by Governor General Award–winning writer, and author of Highwater Press’ The Seven Teaching Stories, Katherena Vermette.

Red River Stallion

Red River Stallion
Author: Troon Harrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2013-02-12
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 159990845X

In 1830s Canada, a thirteen-year-old Cree girl journeys westward from York Factory to the Red River Valley, lured by a Norfolk trotter horse and determined to find her Scottish fur trader father.

Red River, Vol. 20

Red River, Vol. 20
Author: Chie Shinohara
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2013-08-13
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1421568381

Yuri and Rusafa, now prisoners of Ramses, arrive in Egypt to word that Kail has fallen ill. Making good on a promise to Yuri to find out how this information was obtained, Ramses discovers that the Egyptian end of the intelligence conduit involves Queen Nefertiti. Rusafa tries to escape and warn Kail that one of his aides is a spy. If he makes it, he'll have grave news to share with Kail. Will this news render Kail, already disheartened by military failure, incapable of regrouping and heading off the Egyptian threat to the Hittite Empire? -- VIZ Media