Searching for Savanna

The Murder of One Native American Woman and the Violence Against the Many

Mona Gable

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781982153694
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982153700
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

A gripping and illuminating investigation "that is far overdue" (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises ) into the disappearance of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind when she was eight months pregnant, highlighting the shocking epidemic of violence against Native American women in America and the societal ramifications of government inaction. In the summer of 2017, twenty-two-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind vanished. A week after she disappeared, police arrested the white couple who lived upstairs from Savanna and emerged from their apartment carrying an infant girl. The baby was Savanna's, but Savanna's body would not be found for days.The horrifying crime sent shock waves far beyond Fargo, North Dakota, where it occurred, and helped expose the sexual and physical violence Native American women and girls have endured since the country's colonization.With pathos and compassion, Searching for Savanna confronts this history of dehumanization toward Indigenous women and the government's complicity in the crisis. Featuring in-depth interviews, personal accounts, and trial analysis, this timely book investigates these injustices and the decades-long struggle by Native American advocates for meaningful change.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• Chapter One: Without a Trace
• Chapter Two: That Awful Woman
• Chapter Three: Awareness
• Chapter Four: Savanna
• Chapter Five: Keep the Greywinds Out
• Chapter Six: Too Beautiful for Earth
• Chapter Seven: Conflicting Accounts
• Chapter Eight: Brooke
• Chapter Nine: Tears of Joy
• Chapter Ten: December
• Chapter Eleven: The Hearing
• Chapter Twelve: Eleven Weeks
• Chapter Thirteen: A Poem
• Chapter Fourteen: Walking in Ancestral Lands
• Chapter Fifteen: Tillie Black Bear
• Chapter Sixteen: Birthday
• Chapter Seventeen: The Prosecutors
• Chapter Eighteen: Fort Berthold
• Chapter Nineteen: Savanna and Ashton
• Chapter Twenty: Trust
• Chapter Twenty-One: Mama
• Chapter Twenty-Two: Memorial
• Chapter Twenty-Three: William
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Fargo
• Chapter Twenty-Five: I Had Hope
• Chapter Twenty-Six: The Detectives
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: Day Three
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: Day Four
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: That Girl
• Chapter Thirty: The Sentence
• Chapter Thirty-One: Red Dresses
• Chapter Thirty-Two: A Baby
• Chapter Thirty-Three: What Remains
• Chapter Thirty-Four: Spirit Lake
• Chapter Thirty-Five: The Blue Building
• Chapter Thirty-Six: There Isn’t a Day
• Chapter Thirty-Seven: August
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright