“…March details in this searing account the case of Cherie Rhoades, the first woman tried for mass murder in the United States…This portrait of a flawed woman driven to commit a heinous crime makes for fascinating reading.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“..Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter gives a glimpse into the familial and political conflicts that Indigenous individuals face as they attempt to deal with trauma passed down from generation to generation, while simultaneously try to govern themselves under a flawed U.S. system.”
— Martha Nagakawa
“..March has compiled an important work that draws on his impressive journalistic research, which incorporates his own interviews along with archival research and engagement with the historical literature. March’s thoughtful and sensitive investigation of the systemic issues leading to the violence at Cedarville Rancheria effectively illustrates the complex challenges facing tribal communities as they navigate the processes of self-determination..”
— Andrew Shaler
A story that moves from murder to larger issues of identity, cultural genocide, and Native American life.
“…the narrative hits on some centrally important questions: Who is an Indian? Who decides? And “to what extent is tribal dysfunction and the dysfunction present in contemporary Native American culture something that state and federal policy, especially gambling policy, incentivizes?”
— Kirkus Review
“March connects the threat of banishment and disenrollemnt, along with issues of tribal sovereignty, with the Alturas murders.”
— Lee Juillerat
“Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter – Tribal Treachery at the Cedarville Rancheria” by investigative journalist Ray A. March is a true-to-life account that at times echoes Tommy Orange’s fictional “There, There.”
— Gabriel S. Galanda
galandabroadman.com
From the UK —
“I was gripped by Mass Murder in California’s Empty Quarter. Ray A. March’s book is sensitively written, and its (true) story will linger long in my mind. The author did a great job of bringing to life the circumstances of the crime itself and also the surrounding circumstances, both in terms of the background to the murders and their aftermath. A fascinating read. “
— Emily Midorikawa,
Out of the Shadows—
Six Visionary Victorian Women
in Search of a Public Voice
“The story alone shocks, as an unsettling unfolding of full-blown tragedy in the least expected of places. But the fascination is in the detailed how and why of it, and the gathering dread sense of where it was fated to end. Catch a master at his craft. You couldn’t be in better hands.”
— Goodreads
Janet Roger, author,
Shamus Dust: Hard Winter,
Cold War, Cool Murder
“A new book, Mass Murder In California’s Empty Quarter, chronicles the intersection of murder and disenrollment. Author Ray March tells the story of how, in 2014, a former Cedarville Rancheria Chairwoman executed her brother, nephew, niece, and the tribe’s administrator before they could evict her, deprive her of $80,000 in annual gaming per capita monies, and disenroll her.”
— Gabe Galanda
“My solitary thought thus far, ‘Sonofabitch that March guy can write clean clear alluring sentences!’”
— Paul Zarzysky, Poet Laureate of the Rockies