In the 1920s, the Osage tribe was pushed off their land by whites. The land they resettled on turned out to be rich in oil, in turn making the Osage some of the wealthiest people in the world. Then, a long string of terrible murders begins, quite obviously targeting tribe members with large inheritances.

Nearly every review of this book mentions how wild it is that so few modern Americans know this story. And it's true - I had not heard of it before this book came to my attention, and you can bet that if there was a series of murders of wealthy white heiresses at the turn of the century, the cases would have passed into legend. Yet the descendants of many of the victims are still searching for answers today.

Grann's writing is clear and simple, taking a sprawling set of cases with a huge number of associated people and making it easy to follow. The photographs really help, too - so many of the folks look like they could be your modern neighbor, except for William Hale, he looked like the Monopoly Man.

This book also makes clear how recent this history is and how its repercussions are still affecting family members today. I do wish it had gone a little further into talking about the loss of financial wealth, but the lingering emotional effects were stark.