Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

 Every week, The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. This week, we spoke with Karen Barros, from 

Barros recommends a book about her own state of Oklahoma — and about a crime that shaped the way our justice system works today. 

David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon" follows the fate of the Osage tribe in the 1920s and 30s. The tribe was relegated to a corner of Oklahoma that the U.S. government considered a wasteland.

"The joke was on the government, because it was found that there was a huge area of oil underneath the land," Barros explained. Members of the tribe became stunningly wealthy — and then, they began to die.

In the 1920s, a community conspired to kill Native Americans for their oil money

'Killers of the Flower Moon'

"The wealthiest ... started mysteriously being killed, murdered," Barros said. "This book explores those murders, and the birth of the FBI in solving those murders."

"We don't realize there has to be a beginning to everything — and the beginning to the FBI saga was very intriguing."

Barros said she immediately wanted to have her book club read it, even if they normally only read fiction. She convinced them, and "they were all just as enthralled with it was I was."

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Ask a bookseller

Tracy Mumford

Author

Bookseller Karen Barros recommends David Grann's book on the murders of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the 1920s and 30s: "This book explores those murders, and the birth of the FBI in solving those murders."

Karen Barros' book club normally only reads fiction, but they had to make an exception for David Grann's newest.

Ask a bookseller: Another Chapter in Owasso, Okla.

'Killers of the Flower Moon' by David Grann

A brutal crime and the beginning of the FBI

Go Deeper.

Like this?