Lola Wicks now works for a small Montana newspaper, and is living with the local sheriff, making it impossible for her to have the crime beat; however, when a local girl "from the rez" freezes to death to escape a menace, Lola decides she needs to investigate. Then she finds out there have been other local girls who mysteriously disappeared as well. Off she goes to see about oil mining in Dakota, with her faithful dog as companion. As Lola starts to poke around, her contacts start dying and as her research begins to yield results, she is KO'd by the bad guys. I would have liked this book better but Lola's rescue was too improbable to be taken seriously. ( )

Brand new library card in hand, I browsed the New Books of the remodeled and modernized main Palo Alto Library—I wanted to find a book to check out. There before me was Gwen Florio’s Dakota. The bold red and black cover features an oil rig and the jacket informs that this is a follow up to her well-received Montana. That was enough for me; I’m off to the check-out computers to scan my new card. Time to read.

It’s winter in Montana and aggressive reporter Lola Wicks is working for Magpie Daily Express in a fictional town near the Blackfeet Nation. She senses a big story when she overhears her boyfriend, Charlie the Sheriff, talking on the phone about finding the frozen body of a missing Blackfeet teenager. The missing girl was last seen alive in North Dakota, 500 miles east of Magpie. What was the girl doing in North Dakota? Lola takes up the challenge and accompanied by her three-legged dog she heads out for the Oil Patch, which turns out to be a dangerous place for inquisitive reporters.

Florio’s aggressive plotting leads to burlesque at times— I found myself laughing in the midst of mayhem, murder, kidnapping and assault. But, the plot moves along quickly, and serious topics are covered with sensitivity. I liked the book enough to download Montana (the eBook), and I enjoyed that also.

Carto ( )

This was a Library Thing Member give away for a review - 1st I apologize for taking so long - I started this when I received it, but put it down and had a hard time picking it back up again... I decided I had to finish it before the end of the year and almost succeeded because it was really a GREAT READ! Full of suspense, I was so fearful for Lola. The whole story was an interesting insight of what most probably goes on at "man camps" in the oilfields out in desolate areas. I would definitely recommend it - it is really an easy read once you get past the 1s quarter of the book the suspense increases. The ending was definitely not expected but a perfect ending for a another sequel. ( )

I should start off by saying that I am a North Dakotan, I live here, my family lives here, my parents were raised here, so my perspective on this may be different than others.

This was a good mystery and it kept me guessing right up to the reveal. Lola is a reporter who decided to go after a story even though her Montana newspaper and Sheriff boyfriend Charlie tell her not to. She finds herself in the North Dakota Oil patch where the men outnumber the women by a huge percentage and finds herself hip deep in all sorts of trouble. She’s on the hunt for a killer of a young girl and maybe even more girls, when she puts it together that many women from the Blackfoot Reservation in Magpie, Montana are going to the patch to work and that work ends up being dancing or prostitution but they are ending up dead, not rich like they were hoping. She takes it upon herself to find the answers and it puts her in danger.

I liked the character of Lola she’s scrappy and fearless, of course that fearlessness gets her in trouble as she dives feet first into a story that is much bigger than she ever expected. I liked this book well enough that I plan to read Florio’s first book Montana and I look forward to reading more of Lola’s adventure’s especially after the ending of this one I am curious how she will deal with that going forward.

The author also does a good job of respecting the Native Americans while honoring their culture. Also the descriptions of the man camps and the bars near them were pretty spot on.

I wish the narrator, Caroline Shaffer, hadn’t used the movie Fargo to learn a North Dakota accent. The character of Charlotte sounds just like the lady cop on the movie/tv show Fargo, and that annoyed me to no end. Her Native American accents were a little better and the main character was good because she wasn’t from North Dakota. Also The Bakken is pronounced Bahkken (like Bah humbug). It wasn’t that the narrator was bad I liked her narration except when she was doing her Fargo impressions. So I would listen to this new to me narrator again as long as the book wasn’t set in my home state!

This story looks at the gritty underbelly of the Bakken Oil Patch in North Dakota it involves prostitution and human trafficking and it may seem like fiction but unfortunately it is a true consequence of the major influx of people coming to ND to work, the crime rate in ND has gone up considerably and there are a lot of murders and crime on the west end of our state.

One thing that bothered me was, Thor saying this is Dakota, I have never heard anyone from North Dakota call it just Dakota because we need to make the distinction that we are North Dakota Not South Dakota.

3 ½ Stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher & Librarything however I did end up checking out the audiobook from my library. ( )