Life on the edge
Marcie Rendon returns with third in Cash Blackbear series

In January 2019, I received a reviewer’s galley from Cinco Puntos Press, a publisher I hadn’t known or heard of. The book turned out to be the dreamy gamble of two bookish friends quartered in a rented or borrowed storefront in downtown El Paso, Texas.

I love the surprise of handpicked and loved books from gutsy, low-volume, literary entrepreneurs. And who but the genuinely undaunted would presume to make a go of publishing English language novels in a city that’s nearly 90% percent Hispanic? Who would spend hard-won money to send a 200-page glued-up book to a book reviewer? You’ve got to love the pluck. 

The novel Cinco Puntos sent me was “Girl Gone Missing,” written by a mature, creative influencer and member of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Marcie. R. Rendon. This was her second book with Cinco Puntos Press, and it is a lovely, endearing story about the life of 19-year-old Cash Blackbear circa 1970s. She drives beet trucks and tractors for area farmers while barely attending a small college in Fargo, N.D., where she lives. Every night, she makes real money playing eight-ball in the local bar and is on call to Norman County Sheriff Wheaton for her uncanny intuition in criminal cases.  

A product of the fostering system since infancy, at 5 feet 2 inches, Cash is a hellcat who suffers no fools. (You can read my May 2, 2019, review in the “Murder Ink” archives at www.durango telegraph.com. It’s a lovely story you’ll never forget.)

And now, released March 4, is Rendon’s third Cash Blackbear mystery, “Broken Fields,” this time published by the industry’s preeminent crime fiction publisher, Soho Press. It was inevitable after the success of “Girl Gone Missing” that one of the big New York publishers would lure Rendon away. This one shows the polished narrative of Cash’s existence circulating around trucks, Marlboro cigarettes, beer, some school now and again, a little perfunctory sex, and suckering farm boys to play pool at the Casbah. 

It’s a pretty mundane, rural existence until she finds a farmer she’s plowing for dead on the kitchen floor of his farm manager’s house. The house is empty of the manager and his wife, but Cash finds their little dark-eyed, black-haired daughter frightened and speechless under a bed upstairs.

Cash once again finds herself in the middle of the familiar brutality of life on and off the reservation. Sheriff Wheaton needs her intuition and instinct for presaging misaligned messages, and “Broken Fields” is another stunning tale of life outside cultured restraint. 

Rendon has the talent to stay out of her writing and let the story tell itself through the leathery life of Cash Blackbear. She’s a character you will never forget and forever feel a part of you and the impatience you may feel these days for things gone not quite right.

“Broken Fields” is a must if you read “Girl Gone Missing.” And if you want a real E-ticket ride, go to Maria’s Bookshop and drop $16 for Cinco Puntos Press’ paperback of “Girl Gone Missing.” Then it won’t hurt so much to go back for Soho Crime’s $29 tidy 250-page hardback of “Broken Fields.” And ease the burden further by asking Maria’s for your 15% Murder Ink discount.