Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann has been in the mainstream media recently as it was adapted into a movie with a star-studded cast. Now, as readers we all know the books are typically better than the movie so I’ve read the book first! What follows are my thoughts of this heartbreaking non-fiction piece.

Killers of the Flower Moon contains 3 main chronicles: The Marked Woman, The Evidence Man, and The Reporter. There are also three main people he focuses on throughout the story. Mollie Burkhart is an Osage woman who is married to a white man. She and her people and family are the main focus of Chronicle 1. Grann works hard to accurately portray the instability of the Osage people as they navigated forced assimilation, being pushed onto plots of land and away from their way of life and community, and then their experiences with newfound riches and the fear that came with having guardians controlling their money and then murdering them for those riches. In Chronicle 2, Grann focuses on the story of the many failed investigations and then the birth of the FBI and how it related to the Osage Killings. He focuses on Tom White, a hard-working FBI agent who grew up in Texas and who was once a Texas Ranger. Tom White worked hard to solve the Osage cases even with all that was stacked against him. In Chronicle 3, Grann discusses the difficulty of piecing together all these stories with half-buried secrets and the many people that have already left this world. He highlights the impossibility of knowing the true number of how many Osage were killed and hurt during this time and discusses some stories that even Tom White never discovered himself.

Grann’s portrayal of so many aspects of these many interwoven stories is brilliant. This reads like the marriage of a true Western mystery and a historical nonfiction piece. Grann beautifully portrayed the people of the Osage as humans and discussed the way they were abused in terms that were hard to read at times. This realism is so important in a nonfiction piece. The suspense of what was to come was there, but Grann stayed true to the fact that he was writing about real people who still have family here that just want the truth found and shared. The pacing of this book was phenomenal and the pictures of each person mentioned gave this piece a sense of place and time that many writers strive and fail at.

I wholeheartedly give Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann a five out of five star rating. This truly is a capstone historical piece that brings a difficult subject to light in the truest fashion.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Westerns, historical novels, mysteries, or considers themselves a true crime fan. I have yet to watch the movie but I hope they did this writing justice!