Sing for the Red Dress - Marshall, Joseph M

This book is both a love story between university professor Dr. Gavin Lone Wolf and Washington DC lawyer Katherine Hill and a haunting narrative of the ongoing problem on Indian reservations of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). An issue that has been neglected for years in real life by both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the FBI, partly due to jurisdictional conflicts, the fictional Smokey River Tribal Police Force decides to make a difference when they find the names of twelve Native girls who are thought to have been abducted for sex trafficking to oil field workers. Risking their own lives to rescue the girls, when the tribal police and others, including Gavin Lone Wolf and Katherine Hill, infiltrate the oil camps and dig deeper they uncover a cultured but ruthless villain who will stop at nothing to maintain his power.Central to the story is the conundrum of Native people struggling to live in a white dominated society that looks the other way while girls and woman are abducted at an alarming rate. In addition to gathering information for a targeted investigation, characters also participate in indigenous cultural rituals like the sweat lodge to ask for both physical stamina and spiritual guidance to find and rescue the young victims. Gavin must utilize all his Native skills, including following a hawk's path in the sky, to unite his family before time runs out for a witness who knows too much about the sex-trafficking scheme. Marshall's eye-opening depiction of the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is both heartbreaking and gripping. Prepare yourself for perhaps the most magnificent funeral entourage in the history of fiction. Consider this book a call to action because the character of Melvina Old Lodge, who appears only briefly, is unforgettable. Others in Marshall's "Smokey River Suspense Series" include "The Last Prisoner of the Little Bighorn," "The Wolf and the Crow," and "Blood on the Dress," the sequel to "Sing for the Red Dress, all of which will be released on October 1, 2024. The main characters in the series primarily live on the fictional Smokey River Reservation based on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, but plotlines extend to traditional Lakota territory on the Northern Plains. His contemporary novels are based on current issues facing Lakota people, including crime and the interface between tribal government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI, and the ongoing epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women that has largely been ignored by the American public and media.