Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom
Published by Atria Books
Publication date: June 6, 2023
Genres: Book Clubs, Fiction, Cultural, Historical 
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In the northern territory of Montana in 1872 a 16-year-old Crow Nation girl named Goes First marries an American fur trader twice her age. Her life and travels with him form the center point of Kathleen Grissom’s engrossing novel, Crow Mary.
Goes First’s life has been a typical one amongst her people, nomadic, with the years following the migrations of the buffalo. She embodies her name as an inquisitive child always eager to try something new and to be first. Her father is chief of their tribe and through him and her grandfather she becomes as skilled with a bow and gun and at riding a horse as any of the braves. She learns the languages and hand signals of other Indigenous nations and even some English when they trade with the white men. When one of them, Abe Farwell, asks for her hand in marriage she agrees. Farwell is traveling to Canada to build a substantial outpost to trade pelts for supplies, guns, and often, whiskey. Goes First’s fluency with language, her fortitude, and intelligence make her an ideal partner. Except he believes her name should be Anglicized so she becomes Mary and later Crow Mary to identify her tribe.
Crow Mary is a first-person narrative written in the present tense and in the style you might expect from a non-English speaking person. Sentences are brief and could feel basic to some, but for me it was an impactful and immersive experience of life from a voice seldom heard. Crow Mary is only 16 when she leaves behind her family, culture, and community to go off with a man to lands she’s never seen. A man she comes to love, but a man who nonetheless believes in the superiority of his racew. Her strength, resilience and pride in her heritage are the crux of the novel. She’s forced to bend to the laws of the whites and Canada, but she doesn’t let that stop her when it comes to doing what she believes is right. Her convictions are such that she acts when no one else will to save others, risking her own life.
This is a true story, meticulously researched by Grissom, who is white. She worked closely with Mary’s great granddaughter and with tribal leaders and historians and it shows. Especially towards the end when the culmination of the white man’s resolve to obliterate every trace of Indigenous identity and culture impacts Mary directly. It’s a heartbreaking and all too real scenario, but while parts of the novel are shameful and vile in how Native Americans, especially the women, were treated Mary never folds or loses her sense of self. Crow Mary is not a book I’ll forget anytime soon.
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I loved this book as well.
I don’t know how I missed it when it came out. I’m always looking for Indigenous fiction, but most of what I’ve read has been by men. This was astonishing. I loved her so much.
Okay I’ve heard great things about this novel — I must get it. And the author seems a bit Canadian too, eh? Though now in Va. With 5 stars — it seems pretty much like she hit it out of the park. Yay!! I will get to it.
ps. It’s a very hard day today … so keep up a news /media ban and stick to the novels.
It took me completely by surprise in the best way. I definitely think you’d like it.
I’m working on my sanity plan for the next 24 months. I spent MLK day in blissful ignorance avoiding even social media. Now, I’m taking in small, measured doses of the virulent poison in the hopes I can build up my immunity. How are you doing?