Dennis McAuliffe Jr.

Reading the history of Native American - European-American relationships (among other things), I have given up the idea that there is any bottom to the depths of human depravity. Here we have another episode in the ongoing belief that Native Americans have no property rights, no human rights ... .

Unfortunately, a book that I opened with great anticipation founders on the author's self-pity and editorial incoherence.

McAuliffe manages to feel terribly sorry for himself for someone who ignored his Native American heritage into his 30s. He doesn't actually know too many Osages, but he takes everything that happened to them very personally. This is all about him. Does he think that these injustices matter only because HE happens to be part Osage? I was hoping that his new attention to his Native American heritage would give him some insight into the issues of creating multicultural history, but it doesn't.
McAuliffe convinces me that his grandmother was murdered, but his solution is confused. He starts out with one suspect, and somewhat abruptly switches to another without bothering to rewrite the relevant parts of the book. I cannot help but suspect that this is in deference to his mother's feelings, and he never builds a convincing picture of his grandparents' relationship. He actually has very little evidence for his final suspect. Sure, it's a plausible scenario, but there are a few problems and there is no actual evidence.

A waste of a potentially very powerful book.… (meer)