By Morin Bishop, lifetime writer and editor and current co-owner of Womrath Bookshop

Sept. 15, 2021: If you generally read only fiction, but think you’d like to dip your toe in the nonfiction pool, please, please check out this amazing piece of reporting that will have you rapidly devouring page after page as if immersed in an irresistible thriller.

Among its many interwoven strands: the story of the Osage Indians in the 1920s, rendered fabulously wealthy by the oil reserves beneath the seemingly undesirable land in Oklahoma where the beleaguered tribe had been forced to settle; a gripping mystery resulting from the murder of more than 20 members of the tribe; and finally a hero’s tale of the dogged FBI agent who broke the case and helped new director J. Edgar Hoover establish his agency—known since its inception in 1908 as woefully corrupt—as an American institution. 

"If this all sounds like the plot of a detective novel,” writes Dave Eggers in his review for the New York Times, "you have fallen under the spell of David Grann’s brilliance. In his previous two books . . . .  Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true. As a reporter he is dogged and exacting, with a singular ability to uncover and incorporate obscure journals, depositions and ledgers without ever letting the plot sag. As a writer he is generous of spirit, willing to give even the most scurrilous of characters the benefit of the doubt.”

From beginning to end you will be edified and entertained—do not miss this one.