Where They Last Saw Her author Marcie Rendon (right, pictured alongside library director Heidi Schutt) paid a visit to the Blue Earth Community Library on Tuesday, April 22 as the capstone to this year’s Faribault County Reads program. After a brief self-introduction and an excerpt reading from her novel, Rendon opened the floor for audience questions from the nearly 50 attendees. Rendon was also present afterwards to sign copies of her books.

Faribault County Reads held its capstone event at the Blue Earth Community Library on Tuesday, April 22 with a visit from Where They Last Saw Her author Marcie Rendon. The event was very well attended by the community, with around 50 people in attendance from all around Faribault County and beyond. Rendon also made an appearance at the Muir Library in Winnebago earlier that day.

Rendon opened her presentation with a self-introduction in Ojibwe, where she shared that she is a member of the White Earth Ojibwe, Eagle Clan. She then gave an introduction to Where They Last Saw Her, going into detail about the journey from first draft to finished novel and all of the twists and turns that the writing process involved.

“The Cash Blackbear series was the first series of books that I ever wrote, but I actually got my start in writing with standardized testing questions,” Rendon shared. “If any of you remember those test questions that have a short paragraph of text followed by a multiple choice question – I used to write those for a living.”

Rendon also shared that the idea for Where They Last Saw Her didn’t actually come from her, but rather from one of her publishing agents, and the novel was written as an exercise in collaborative storytelling.

“My agent from Penguin Random House was the one who suggested that I write a stand-alone book that featured the topic of missing and murdered Indigenous women,” Rendon explained. “We did a river walk together along the Red River, one of many such rivers where the bodies of Indigenous women have historically been dumped. It really opened my eyes to just how little the world knew about Indigenous women going missing.”

Another interesting point about the book concerns the ending, which Rendon admits that she struggled with writing.

“My agent wasn’t satisfied with the initial non-resolution ending I had planned for the novel, and kept bringing up the fact that this book had to appeal to a national audience,” Rendon said. “I really had to trust that my agent knew what she was doing, because I had never written a stand-alone novel like this before.”

Following a reading of the first chapter of the book, Rendon opened the floor for audience questions, both about her writing process and about her various books.

“Which parts of your own personality would you say influenced the characters of Cash and Quill?” one audience member asked.

“For me, Cash is a conglomeration of all of the Native women I know,” Rendon responded. “Quill, on the other hand, really demonstrates the concept of resilience and the strength of community. There’s a lot of talk about the trauma that Indigenous people have suffered throughout the generations, but I think it’s important to have characters like Quill and Cash to remind my readers that we are more resilient than we are traumatized.”

Another audience member inquired as to why there seemed to be so much tension between Quill and her husband, Crow, throughout the novel.

“I brought this topic up for discussion at one of the book talk sessions here at the library, and myself and lots of the other women all agreed that we wouldn’t have had the courage to stand up to our own husbands like that,” the audience member shared.

“For me, I think that tension may stem from a cultural difference – Native women are more than willing to do something about the injustice in their communities,” Rendon replied. “That being said, I still had to write a believable married couple when I wrote for Quill and Crow. I’ve had a lot of Native women who read my books tell me, “you wrote my story,” while many of the non-Native women tell me that they wish they could be more like Cash or Quill.”

While on the topic of the variances in readership, Rendon mentioned that the first complaint she received from a Native reader about Where They Last Saw Her was about the character of Cliff, a police officer on the reservation.

“I had that reader come to me and say, “you made the cop the villain,” and they were rather upset about that,” Rendon recalled. “But it reflects the reality that, often times, the police are not out to help the Indigenous community, and often times act to obstruct justice in cases like these where Indigenous women go missing.”

A final audience question referred not to the characters of Where They Last Saw Her, but rather to the characters of the Cash Blackbear series.

“How would you describe the relationship between Cash and Sheriff Wheaton in the Cash Blackbear series?” the audience member inquired.

“Cash is an interesting character because she’s only 19 – she smokes, and she’s very mature for her age, but she’s also very independent,” Rendon commented. “I think, in a way, Wheaton is a sort of benign mentor figure for Cash – he doesn’t get in her way, but gives her just enough information to let her figure things out for herself.”