"Killers of the Flower Moon"

Reads like a thriller, but it's all true! A genuine, wild, and eye-opening account of history.

Summary:

After the discovery of oil on their reservation, the Osage tribe became the wealthiest people of their time. Yet in the 1920s, they also became the most targeted. Dozens on rich young Osage die in suspicious or gruesome circumstances, one after the other, along with anyone who tries to find answers. Hoover's Bureau of Investigation (what would become the FBI) is called in to investigate the string of murders, uncovering one of the bloodiest conspiracies in American history.

Verdict: 10/10

I was blown away by this book. Every twist was like something you'd read in a thriller, made all the more shocking because it's not fiction! You can't make up this crazy train of events with one of the most convoluted web of lies I've ever read.

The crimes are WILD! I mean, poisonings and shootouts and exploding houses! But Grann doesn't sensationalize the deaths. He introduces you to the person instead of listing them as simply a victim. There's a lot of respect paid to the lives lost and the others impacted. Each death carries emotional weight and gets you all the more invested in the case. And when I found out the characters you've come are the culprits, the sense of betrayal felt personal!

Grann made history so relatable. Everyone has family troubles like a racist aunt or a mischievous sibling. And the way the story was structured was genius! In the first chronicle, the reader is shocked and lost in the chaos like everyone else, and only in the next section does the author reveal the truth behind the lies. As readers, we often disconnect and think that the answer is obvious, forgetting how easy it is for humans to misperceive information. As Grann points out,

"History is a merciless judge… wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end if the mystery from the outset.” - Pg. 256

This book covered so much history that I'd never heard, not just with the murders but with the wealth of the Osage and the government guardianships. Grann also showed the difference in investigations and the law in the turn of the century. I never knew that Western jurors were essentially the "detectives" unless you called in a private eye. And the autopsies were usually done by these jurors too!

Grann features the murders, the investigation, and the trials, but while you think the story would end there, he continues with another third chronicle. This last 60 pages seemed like falling action since it wasn't as climatic as the rest of the book. But it also showed how unfinished this story was. There will always be so many questions left unanswered and more mysteries unsolved. Unlike fiction, there isn’t closure, making the events all the more haunting to the reader and the victims' families.

I put off reading this because I thought nonfiction would too dry for the thrills and chills of October. But from the first couple pages, I was completely riveted. Seriously, the first paragraph packs in so much intrigue, and continued at a break-neck pace for the book's entirety. I wish history was told like this more often.