Book Look: Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann

 I value books that open my eyes to previously unsuspected episodes of history, and I especially value books that do so in a comprehensive and engaging way. Grann does an exceptional job of escorting his readers through the labyrinth of actors, events, and eras that comprise this shocking true-crime drama set in 1920s Oklahoma.

What a snapshot this provides into a fascinating - though largely appalling - period in U.S. history! The idea of the "lawless wild west" has become a sort of trope over time, gradually drained of specific context or meaning. Grann's narrative, however, brings the trope vividly to life, as he gradually unfolds a tale stuffed with thieves, profiteers, gangsters, robber barons, charlatans, con men, moonshiners, forgers, poisoners, cheats, faithless friends, corrupt officials, and murderers ... all of them preying on a single band of Osage Indians lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been inadvertently resettled by the U.S. government on a reservation that turned out to be perched atop oceans of black gold.

I think the thing that shocked me most was the relentlessness of the assault upon the wealth of these largely innocent and naïve people. Targeted by gold-digging suitors. Forced to beg government-appointed “guardians” for access to their own wealth – guardians who regularly treated the accounts they managed as their own private bank accounts. Deliberately plied with alcohol and drugs to undermine their competency. Their rights and identities as human beings treated as inconsequential. Gouged and exploited by every vendor they interacted with, including the undertakers who buried them after they were killed off for their inheritances (or illicit insurance policies, or forged IOUs …). Ultimately, the challenge faced by the budding U.S. agency later to be christianed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) isn’t figuring out which parties are responsible for the string of murders by poison/gunshot/bombing, but whether justice has a hope of prevailing in a world where truth is arbitrary, fairness is immaterial, betrayal is inescapable, life is cheap, greed transcends morality, and almost every public official is corruptible.

A heads up to those who haven’t yet read the book: resist the temptation to stop reading about 50-70 pages before the end, thinking that the puzzle has been solved and everything else is wrapping up loose ends. Because this is when Grann’s scholarship kicks in, excavating layers of duplicity that even the FBI overlooked. An altogether fascinating but deplorable tale of the ingenious and perfidious lengths to which unscrupulous humans will sink in their desperation for wealth, and the appalling tragedies suffered by the Osage peoples at their hands.