Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (“History is a merciless judge.”)

What a dreadfully boring book. If it had not been for the choice of my Book Club, and the responsibility I felt toward contributing to the discussion, I would not have finished it. As it was, each page was nearly tortuous to read, the writing as stilted as if I had been reading an encylopedia. Where was the passion? Where was the life within these characters? Absent, except for within my own imagination.

Certainly I am one of the few who feels this way, as Killers of The Flower Moon has been both a bestseller and a National Book Award Finalist. It’s possible I was disgruntled in part because of my intense passion for translated literature. But, I found the story slow to evolve and the characters largely devoid of life. However, it is does fit in perfectly with today’s recurring theme of the terrible white man, and all he has done to abuse others not of his race.

Grann tells the story of the Reign of Terror, in which Ernest Burkhart (following the orders of his uncle, William K. Hale) took away everything from his Osage wife’s family: her mother, sisters, brother-in-law, and trust were all sacrificed in his desire for the headrights (which the Osage had) to the oil fields in Oklahoma on which they lived.

In conjunction with the tale of the Osage murders, Grann relates tales of the judicial system in the 1920s and the subsequent birth of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. As my mother said, “It is hard to believe that the FBI is relatively new,” or that finger printing was not a common practice before the 1930s.

This book tells a heartbreaking tale of the horrible mistreatment of the Osage in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. But, in my opinion, their story was inelegantly told.