Sierra Crane Murdoch is a Gorge-based writer whose work concerns communities in the American West, particularly those tied to natural resource extraction. Her first book, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country, is part true crime, part social criticism. Yellow Bird chronicles an oil boom and a murder on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, tracing the steps of an Arikara woman, Lissa Yellow Bird, as she searches for a young white oil worker who went missing from the reservation. Crane Murdoch has reported on the oil boom in North Dakota and its impact on the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation since 2011. Her journalism and essays have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker online, Orion, The Atlantic, and High Country News, where she was a staff writer and contributing editor. https://www.sierramurdoch.com/
Book Club Details: Students will read a selection of chapters from Yellow Bird and will discuss the book together on Zoom November 5, 2020, and follow with a live question and answer session with the author November 12, 2020 (likely on Zoom, unless it is safe to gather in person). Times TBD.
Book Club Lead: Leigh Hancock