Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch is a fascinating true crime story about Lissa Yellow Bird’s quest to find out what happened to a young white oil worker who had mysteriously vanished. Murdoch captures the idiosyncrasies and incredible life story and passions of Lissa, while framing the narrative amidst a context of intergenerational trauma and the history of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. KC Clarke disappeared in the middle of the Bakken oil boom, which brought money as well as crime, drugs, contamination, and violence into the reservation.
Murdoch’s narration is thoughtful and well-plotted. In her author’s note, she says that she included herself consciously in the story to make it clear where she came from, to make it clear that this story was being told from the perspective of a white woman from outside the reservation and area. That’s the key word I would give her account: honest. She tells us her impressions of Lissa, tells us how information came her way, muses on how much she and Lissa trusted one another. She captures the bold, chaotic way that Lissa doggedly throws her way into the case—captures Lissa’s resilience, her skill, her intelligence, while noting what she couldn’t quite get at with Lissa, the small things that occasionally changed her perceptions.
Murdoch’s writing is superb, and she tells a story of pain, trauma, addiction, and murder in a way that is both direct and takes care to include deep dives into the real people the story involves, and the histories that surround the main timeline. While I sometimes got confused on reentry to the primary storyline of KC Clarke’s disappearance after a divergence into history or a swerve into explaining a certain character, it always came together. Lissa Yellow Bird is a complicated and incredible woman, and her story of investigation is full of twists, surprises, intimidation, plotting, corruption, mystery—and hope.
