Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann

 This is the book from which Martin Scorsese made his latest movie.   It's easy to see what attracted Scorsese.   Grann has unearthed a long-forgotten story about the abuse of a Native American tribe, the Osage. who purely by chance became incredibly rich when oil was discovered beneath the worthless land to which they had been displaced.   Briefly, those who could claim tribal rights became briefly some of the richest people on earth, with vast homes, fleets of cars and household servants, some of them white.   That was never going to be tolerated in early 2oth century America.   First came the bandits to steal Osage property, then financial advisers to shepherd the poor lambs into handing over their wealth, then came the men of business, notably William Hale, a middle-aged former champion cattle roper and failed business man who rapidly became the Friend of the Osage people and King of the Osage Hills.

Then the Osage started dying, by the bucketload.   Grann focuses on Mollie Burkhart, whose sister Anna is abducted and murdered in May 1921.   One of the Mollie's sisters has already died young.   Her mother soon succumbs, then her first husband, then Mollie herself starts to decline.   Mollie, of course, has become the heiress of her sisters and mother.   If Burkhart sounds an odd name for an Native American woman, she got it from her second husband, Ernest Burkhart.   Ernest is only important because he was the nephew of none other than William Hale.

Then the Mollie's final sister dies with her husband when their home is blown up.   Even the lacklustre law enforcement of the US West at that time cannot ignore this.   Even J Edgar Hoover, young leader of what was yet to become the FBI, becomes interested.   He sends agents to Osage County, Oklahoma, led by a tenacious Texan called Tom White.  White comes from a law enforcement dynasty.   He is a former Texas Ranger.   We find ourselves in a world of paradox where cowboys are protecting Native Americans from former cowboys.

White's pursuit of the truth is protracted.   It takes him several years.   But he gets there - and the scandal he uncovers almost defies belief.   Grann handles it all extremely well.   His measured journalistic prose carries us through revelations that otherwise might seem preposterous.   He also lets us empathise with both both the hopeless and the heartless.   It is a major work of revisionary US history.