Marcie R. Rendon > Quotes

“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

“Cash also carried her body like the farmers she had lived with, worked for. She strode with purpose. She stood with firm feet planted on the ground. Shoulders squared back, a ready-to-fight stance, from all the fights she had finished when taunted for being Indian.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Sinister Graves

“There wasn’t a name Cash hadn’t been called: squaw, whore, stupid, heathen. She had heard them all. These days, she mostly just ignored irrelevant behavior. She shrugged and took another drag of her cigarette. Free beer and free games all night. What did she care?”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Her whole world was wheat and chaff and stubble and the drone of combines and Ford trucks with clutches that stretched her short frame to the max.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“But she was quick and smart and what she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in sheer determination.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“what you think. Your thoughts are powerful. They can create reality.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Where we going?”
― Marcie R Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“And for whatever reason, she and Wheaton had developed a bond: he the county cop and she the county’s lost child. He was the one who showed up for her track meets at school, the one who bought her a wool sweater each Christmas. She didn’t have the heart to tell him the wool made her skin itch, probably because it reminded her of sleeping in his jailhouse.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Cash always felt like she, Cash, was just more dead weight in that big old purse.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Thank god, she was in the woods, the real woods, the pinewoods of northern Minnesota. Easy to hide a truck and a woman sleeping in it.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“he appeared more interested in a book than a real-life situation.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Sinister Graves

“But this is the country I know. This Valley. This river. This flat land that goes on forever. The dang wind chill every winter. The wind blowing across this prairie we bend over and walk into. We get used to it. It becomes us. You know, when they sing, 'amber waves of grain,' that tugs at my heart. Still. Those are our wheat fields ...

-Sheriff Wheaton”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“Never knew what kind of trouble one could run into in these small-town bars in northern Minnesota. One braid was less of a handful to grab than a whole head of hair.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“She’d been smoking since she was eleven, drinking too, but quiet-like, staying out of trouble.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Happens more than we want to know. There are Indian kids, just like your brother, heck just like me, all over this Valley. Fostered out, adopted out, working their fingers to the bone--heck, many of them not being properly fed so they are nothing but muscle and bone to begin with, thinking that if they just do good enough, maybe, just maybe, someday they will actually belong.

Mostly what I see is once they've been used up--in some cases broken beyond repair--they're thrown away like all the battered farm equipment you see sitting in the back of farmyards, back by the windbreak."

- Cash Blackbear in Girl Gone Missing”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“Hey, why’ntcha go. I gotta pull myself together here”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Cash didn’t know what was true or not, but there was a big difference between your family knowing you ran off with someone and your family not knowing where you were at all.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“She didn’t understand where her family had gone; why she never saw them and no one ever came to get her.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“but Cash knew that things sometimes just had to be the way they were.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Geno shrugged. Cash recognized the shrug. She herself brushed off things that were important to her. Too many dreams had been dashed. Too many hopes lost. If you didn't want something too much, it didn't hurt that much if you didn't get it.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Sinister Graves

“He’s good people. He’ll make sure the county listens.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“When the county moved her, the family kept the bike, like they kept all good things. Anything new or worth something always stayed with the foster family.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“a different way of walking on the earth, even in the Red Wing lace-up boots they wore to keep the dirt and wheat chaff off their legs.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“He'd pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Softly on the lips. Then softly on her forehead. 'You'll be my main snag? Okay?' he'd said.
'Okay,' she'd replied into his jean jacket.
And he left, neither f them saying goodbye or waving. Cash locked the door and crawled back into bed. Caught unaware, she felt the huge emptiness of all the people who had ever left her. It was the first time in years that she remembered feeling like crying. Instead she went back to sleep.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“The pool, the beer, the winning—one thing led to another. Right back to Cash’s apartment, in fact, where Cash had asked, “What about your wife and kids?” and Jim had answered, “Don’t worry about it.” So she didn’t. She had a lifetime of not worrying about it.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Yep,” said Cash, already climbing up on the tractor.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“Some things we can't answer. We just know and we have to take care of the knowing. And we have to take care of each other. Not everything can be explained the way the schools or the churches would want us to think they can be.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Sinister Graves

“These Red Lakers had all kinds of Indian Pride. Their reservation was the only closed reservation in the state. Meaning they didn’t fall under state jurisdiction. Meaning they fell under federal jurisdiction.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River

“As a kid in foster homes, she had a nightly dilemma. Night wasn't always the safest time. Should she sleep with the lights off so she was harder to find in the dark? Or should she sleep with the lights on so she could see who was coming to get her? Some families forced her to shut the lights off to save electricity. Before she got older and learned better, that would send her into a tailspin of wondering, late into the night, where and how electricity was saved. You can't see electricity. Except for lightning. So just where and how was it saved? She imagined giant metal storage bins somewhere in the country filled with shooting lightning bolts.”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing

“twelve-course load and”
― Marcie R. Rendon, Murder on the Red River