This story brings to light some of the issues the Native Americans face in our current world. There are some twists and turns and the characters are well developed.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women, women like her. When she hears a scream one morning, and only an earing left behind she begins to wonder.

Then another woman goes missing so Quill begins to investigate.

As she closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. Can she figure this out before it’s too late?


This is one of those books that is an important read because it brings attention to the horrors that indigenous women face. The characters were likable, and I was rooting for them the entire time. I also did enjoy the story despite the numerous heavy topics. I did struggle with this one for a few reasons because the pacing is incredibly slow, and for such a heavy topic I needed it to be quicker. The author also included phrases in a different language without translation. I have no issue with including other languages in books, it helps make for a more authentic experience, but in the case of this book I had no idea what was being said because the context was also missing so I was just left missing pieces of the story. I also found the book written in a novice type format. While I knew this was an adult novel, it felt that the writing style was more middle grade in how simplistic it was (not that I would recommend this book to middle grade at all).

Where They Last Saw Her
4.5 ⭐️

This book was so so hard to read but it was so impactful at the same time.

Set on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota, a woman hears a scream while she is out on a run. As she works to figure out what happened to the missing woman, she uncovers a whole lot more is going on as others start to disappear.

This book covers a lot of really difficult topics that affect the Native American community today - trafficking, child abduction, rape, etc. were all front and center in this book. I definitely took my time with this one but I’m so glad I read it and know a little more now about those focused on mmiw issues.

I had a hard time tearing myself away from Rendon's latest novel. Emotionally, it wasn't an easy read, child abductions, missing women, beatings, rapes, sexual slavery, intimidation, family trauma. There is so much horror in these pages, yet knowing how real it is, I couldn't look away. I had to fight through with Quill, our tense and torn heroine divided between keeping her family safe and sane and her consuming desire to help those in her sphere being preyed upon by the evil engulfing her community. This is a timely and gripping novel giving a personal face to an ongoing and frustratingly overlooked epidemic. Bring our women home!

Thanks to NetGalley and Bantam for giving advance access to this title in exchange for an honest review.

Quill has a pretty ideal life: two great kids, a doting husband, and a strong community on the Red Pine Reservation. All are endangered when she hears a blood-curdling scream during one of her marathon training sessions deep in the Minnesota woods. She knows in her heart that it was yet another Indigenous woman being brutalized, but clues are scarce and the official response is lackluster. Quill and her running buddies investigate on their own, uncovering a deep vein of rot running right through their community. Quill is equal parts strong and reckless, a necessary combination when confronting a deep-rooted and very real evil. Thanks, Netgalley.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance review copy in return for an honest review. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. A very dark yet captivating novel. It kept the suspense the whole time.

This is an interesting but slow fictional story about the very real kidnapping, abuse, and murder of native women. I appreciated seeing the author's view of native women in northern Minnesota.

I did struggle with the main character consistently putting herself in danger against her best judgement. While understanding no one was looking out for the women and someone needed to, she still did many ill advised things and her husband who spent the entire him trying to protect her, leaves her high and dry in the heat of the action.

Ultimately, the book is well written and presents a full and colorful picture which helps shed light on the issues native women face.

A strong woman stands up for herself. A stronger woman stands up for everybody else.

A piercing scream broke through the early morning wind that caught Quill's attention. The impact of it was like a punch to the throat. Quill stood still hardly breathing positioned a few miles from the Red Pine Reservation outside of Duluth, Minnesota. This was her running trail, a trail of the all too familiar and the trail bearing the usual weight of silence at dawn.

Fear drove Quill's legs to pump the energy that she needed to get back to her car. She knew she was no longer safe alone on this trail. Upon arriving at home, Quill told her husband, Crow, what had happened. Crow drove immediately to the Tribal Police while Quill waited in the car. She knew that a report from her would be taken with a grain of salt. Later, she and Crow returned to the site of the incident. The tracks only showed the police car heading part way into the area and returning. Not good enough for Quill.

And the strike of a match from within puts Quill in a self-imposed position to find out what really happened on that trail. Quill's headlong drive will later put her at odds with even her husband and her two children. But this darkness will seep in even closer to home in the coming weeks as Quill refuses to back down.

Marcie R. Rendon is a gifted writer. Where They Last Saw Her shifts the tides and puts the reader right into the mix of this erupting volcano in regard to missing and murdered Native Americans and Indigenous women and girls. Rendon shines a light through her solid character of Quill. The statistics are mindboggling with well over 2,500 missing and murdered females. The word "shocking" is not even adequate. How easily these women and girls are taken with hardly a ripple or a wave. My admiration is for Rendon for giving a voice to the voiceless.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Bantam Books (Random House) and to the talented Marcie R. Rendon for the opportunity.

Random House Publishing provided an early galley for review.

This is the fourth novel from Rendon and, having read them all, I see that she employs similar elements with this one as she has with her Cash Blackburn mystery series. Being a Native American, she writes about what she knows and does a fantastic job doing that. Her details about life for those on the reservations comes across clearly and honestly. It is a strength that she plays into for her novels.

Rendon also makes it a point to highlight the challenges that Native Americans face. This novel specifically focuses on the abduction of women and children from reservations. She feels it is important to shine a light on these problems and uses her writing to inform and to sound a call for action.

There are a couple things in her writing, though, that did not work for me as a reader.

First, she occasionally peppers dialogue with the Ojibwe language. While this very much adds to the realism of her work, it can be a source of confusion for the reader. Without some kind of translation, it puts the responsibility on the reader to find a way to translate things (if they decide to put in that effort at all). That takes time that pulls them out of the reading experience.

Second, her sentence structure tends to be less complex. It is often person-did-this, person-did-that. A lot of telling rather than showing. Again, it factors into the overall reading experience.

In both of these things, the mileage may vary depending upon the reader and their usual consumption sources

I just turned the last page of Where They Last Saw Her on my kindle and I am sitting here thinking of the words that would accurately portrait this book. Important. This is an important book that I would recommend for 16 plus. While it is fictional, it is based on the kidnapping and trafficking of our Native women. I am embarrassed to admit that I had no idea this was happening. According to the Author’s note, approximately 4200 missing and murdered cases have gone unsolved.

I have never read any of Marcie Rendon’s books before, but this one is an easy 5 stars for me. Not only is the topic important, it is extremely well written. I looked forward to my time with the characters every night when I read.

“Where We Last Saw Her” had a good plot and likable characters. I liked story of Quill and her friends and learning about their culture. I know many Native American women do go missing so the book was very realistic. However I found the writing style rather immature and not to my taste, which is why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4.

Thank you to Net Galley and Random House - Ballantine Books for the ARC to read and review with my honest opinions.

4.5 stars

Quill is a woman on a mission. She is set on training for the Boston Marathon, but when the reservation she lives on becomes a hunting ground for women and girls who look like her, her husband begs her to be cautious and only run in groups.

Tragedy after tragedy unfurls in this book full of unsolved mysteries. Quill finally decides to take things into her own hands when it seems no law enforcement is focused on finding the Native American women who continue to go missing.

I really enjoyed the main characters and their thorough development. I always love books that educate while they entertain, and this one sheds light on the thousands of missing Indian women and girls in the US & Canada.

Quill is a young woman living on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota, when one day she hears a woman scream while out running in a nearby forested area. Where They Last Saw Her embarks on an investigation of what happened to the woman, and an overall examination of the experience of Native women and their treatment by law enforcement officers and white men, from the perspective of Quill.
This is certainly a worthy topic, but the execution, specifically the writing, was clunky and lacking finesse. When I first started the book, I had to check to see if the author was a debut writer because it felt like it was written by a novice. There were multiple story threads, and while I would not dispute that this is the experience of Native women, it felt like there was too much going on and the author lost certain threads as the book progressed.
For me, while I found the topic and the characters worthwhile, my enjoyment of the book was decreased by the execution of the writing. This was a hard rating to make because of the topic being so important, shedding light on the experience of Native women.
Thank you to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

There’s no denying that the plot starts slow. I definitely almost dnfed. I’m not a fan of writing that does a lot more telling than showing which is something this book features. I also think there is a cycle of scenes that are very similar which made the story a bit bland. Things did pick up eventually, and I was curious to see how things would play out. It’s not my favorite missing woman on a reservation story, but it’s ok.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced eARC.

Where They Last Saw Her takes place on Red Pine reservation in Minnesota. Quill is out running on a wooded trail one day when she hears a woman's scream. Women are disappearing from the reservation, and Quill is determined to find them. The novel explores the issue of the many missing and murdered Indigenous women and the camps of men who have come into the area to work on the pipeline. It's an important subject that the author seeks to tackle, but I found the dialogue awkward and sometimes just didn't feel true. It was a difficult book to get into. Thanks to NetGalley and Bantam for the ARC.

Inspiring mystery! Quill is so lucky that she doesn't live the same heart-wrenching hardships as some of her neighbors. She's compelled to help them at whatever cost. This author is an excellent story teller!

This novel feels authentic and disturbing. It offers a detailed sense of an indigenous community, especially in the sense of community ties, as well as a sold feel for the friendship among the women. They live in a fraught world where hope for justice is faint and pressures to cling to tradition battle with a sense of themselves as strong women. At times, Quill was annoying for her insensitivity, but her need to be herself still shone through. I enjoyed being an insider to the traditions, clothing, and community bonds.

This is a Native American Story set in Minnesota. Quill lives in the Red Pine reservation and deals with her anxiety by running. She's hoping to run the Boston and has inspired some other women to run with her. It's when she is running out alone that she hears something - she is sure that it is a woman that is in trouble. Even with her husband and her friends alerted, she is unable to get the local police interested. Quill does what we would do - she takes it into her own hands and puts herself in danger.
A good story. #randomhouse #marcierrendon #wheretheylastsawher

A hard book to read but an important one and well worth my students reading, both those who are Native and those who aren't. Lots of issues woven into the mystery and strong female characters and strong cultural and family shown.

Well. This was devastating. Incredible thriller with a dark reality woven in. It left me thinking about it for a week after finishing.