Book Review: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

They survived the breaking of treaties, a migration from their original lands to a new home to the south in what is today Oklahoma, but after securing the rights to anything of value under their land could they survive the greed of white men again? Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann exposes how the richest people per capital in the world were targeted for death by their neighbors that nearly all got away with.

Grann frames his narrative non-fiction account of “Reign of Terror” around Mollie Burkhart, whose family was systematically murdered to gain the possession of all their oil headrights planned by her white uncle-in-law, William Hale and abetted by her own husband Ernest. The circumstances of smart Osage negotiating for mineral rights to their lands, the finding of oil, and Congressional “concern”—aka white lobbying—that the Osage couldn’t manage their newfound wealth thus creating “guardians” among local whites to manage people’s lives created the right environment for not only the planned murders of Mollie Burkhart’s family but nearly 60 total Osage in a ten-year period. Though the “Reign” officially ended in 1925 when Hale and his surviving co-conspirators were convicted thanks to the investigation by FBI agents led by Tom White, Grann reveals that Osage deaths continued into the 1930s thanks to white county and state government officials looking the other way for white guardians whose charges died “accidentally”. Whatever satisfaction the reader might feel seeing the guilty jailed is by the end of the book deflated by the affect this period had on the Osage as a whole.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a 100-year-old ripped from headlines true story of money and murder, ‘cowboys and indians’, and “white man’s burden” that David Grann puts into a narrative frame that engages the reader. If you’re into narrative non-fiction, read this book.

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