53 pages • 1 hour read
David GrannKillers of the Flower Moon (Adapted for Young Readers): The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Marked Woman”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Vanishing”
The novel opens with a vivid description of the prairie in Oklahoma in the spring. It’s May 24, 1921, and Mollie Burkhart, a member of the Osage tribe, is worried about Anna Brown, one of her three sisters, because she’s been missing for three days. Mollie is concerned but tries not to worry because Anna has been known to disappear on benders (drinking, dancing, etc.). Usually, Anna returns to Mollie’s house, but this time, “there was a silence as still as the plain” (11). Mollie’s sister Minnie had died three years earlier.
As members of the Osage Tribe, Mollie, her sisters, and their parents are all wealthy thanks to oil deposits on the Osage land. The Osage Tribe originally lived on land now known as Kansas, but in the late 1800s, white settlers forced them to move to a reservation in Oklahoma. The barren, rocky land shocked everyone when it turned out to be on top of large oil deposits. As the oil was discovered and tapped, “prospectors had to pay the Osage” (11). By the early 20th century, the Osage Tribe was earning millions per year and were “the wealthiest people per capita in the world” (12).
The media fed a fascinated public both stories of the Osage wealth and glimpses of occasions when Osage traditions intersected with their lavish lifestyles. The public struggled to reconcile the images of wealth with their racist stereotypes of Native Americans. The Osage people lived in mansions, had servants and chauffeurs (some who were white), and wore expensive jewelry and clothing. This image of wealth did not fit the primitive/wild caricature of an Indigenous person the American public imagined. Due to the money pouring in from the oil, the major towns, also known as boomtowns, in the Osage territory were a melting pot for everyone, from thrill-seekers exploring the Wild West to businessmen and those in the oil industry.
Unlike some of her friends, Mollie wears traditional Osage garb and does not have the trendy hairstyle of the time. She is described as having “long black hair flow[ing] over her back revealing her striking face, with its high cheekbones and big brown eyes” (14). She met her husband, a 28-year-old white man named Ernest Burkhart, when she rode in his taxi. They have three children: Elizabeth, James (whose nickname is “Cowboy”), and Anna. Mollie is a doting mother and takes care of her elderly mother, Lizzie, who lives with them. On the last day Anna is seen alive, Mollie hosts a luncheon. Her husband’s family attends, and some are blatantly racist to Mollie and her family. Anna also attends and is drunk. She is a difficult guest, but she and Mollie make peace before Bryan, Ernest’s brother, drops Anna off at her home after the luncheon. Anna is a recent divorcee and has dated Bryan from time to time.
Three days after the luncheon, Mollie begins to spread the word that Anna is missing. About a week later, an oil worker finds the body of an Osage man who disappeared before Anna did. He had been shot twice in the head. Not long after, a teenage boy hunting with his father discovers Anna’s body. Mollie leads the “grim procession” to identify her body. These are just two of many murders during the Reign of Terror, when white people systematically murdered Osage people for their oil money. The extent of the conspiracy to exploit and kill Osage people is still unknown, but many lawmen, businessmen, judges, and politicians were actively involved or knowingly complicit.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “An Act of God or Man?”
After Anna’s body is discovered, citizens begin an investigation. In many rural places at this time, there are no formal police departments, and citizens perform many of the tasks that law enforcement or government would perform today. A justice of the peace comes to the ravine and selects “jurors,” white men who will determine if Anna’s death is natural or homicide. The jurors, including Ernest and his brother Bryan, collectively determine that Anna has been murdered, but they cannot find the bullet that killed her.
There is an Osage County sheriff named Harve M. Freas who has a reputation for working with criminals, specifically bootleggers who supplied the town with illegal alcohol known as moonshine. The deputy assigned to the case collects little evidence. He does not take a photo of the crime scene, but he notes a set of tire tracks leading to and away from the crime scene and a bottle that smells like moonshine.
Mollie arranges Anna’s funeral, which is expensive because white people exploit the Osage and charge exorbitant rates for all funeral-related necessities. The service reflects the family’s religion, a mix of Catholicism and Osage traditions. Anna’s ex-husband, Oda Brown, also attends the funeral.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “King of the Osage Hills”
Ernest’s uncle, William Hale, is a prominent businessman who arrived in the Osage territory penniless and became an important figure through the cattle business. He supports law and order, and the community views him as a lawman. He promises Mollie that he will find Anna’s murderer. In addition to local investigations, the US Department of the Interior’s Office of Indian Affairs also launches an investigation. Mollie, Ernest, and Ernest’s brother Bryan testify; after hearing that Bryan was the last person to see Anna, they keep Ernest and his brother in jail. There is insufficient evidence, though, so they are both soon released.
There are many initial theories about who killed Anna. The first is that someone outside of the reservation murdered her. The Osage territory attracted outside criminals because of their money and culture of bootlegging and cowboys. Others suspect that Anna’s ex-husband, Oda Brown, killed her because she cut him out of her inheritance after their divorce. They even receive a criminal’s confession that Oda paid him to murder Anna, but there is no proof. They search for the missing bullet that killed Anna.
About two months after Anna died, Mollie’s mother, Lizzie, dies from the same mysterious illness that Minnie, Mollie’s other sister, died from three years earlier. No doctors, Osage or white, could diagnose or cure her, so the public assumes they were poisoned. Bill Smith, the husband of Rita, Mollie’s third sister, proposes that these deaths are connected and that this family is being targeted because of their connection to oil.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Grann uses imagery and metaphor to highlight The Impact of Greed and Prejudice on Justice. He opens the book with a vivid description of the flower-covered hills in the Osage territory that spring up in April. They flourish until May:
[W]hen coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground (11).
In this metaphor, the flowers that cover their land represent the Osage people. Grann uses imagery to show that the flowers are healthy and beautiful until outsiders come to steal their resources and kill them. The phrase “buried underground” foreshadows all of the Osage who are murdered and buried. The Osage people call this moon, which signals destruction, the “flower-killing moon,” and Grann pulls this metaphor through to the book's title.
He continues using nature metaphors when they find Anna’s body: “Vultures [circle] in the sky as Mollie and Rita stepped close to the body” (23). Vultures commonly represent those who survive by feasting on others; they eat other animals’ kills and signal death. These vultures foreshadow the evil forces circling the Osage people. While the vultures circle Anna’s body, the greedy and prejudiced white opportunists who circle the Osage population are ready to kill and pick their remains for their gain.
In light of these ominous forces, Mollie Burkhart exemplifies The Culture and Resilience of the Osage Nation. She maintains a physical connection to her heritage by wearing traditional Osage garb, a blanket over her shoulders, and her long hair, as opposed to the bob, which is more fashionable in white society. Mollie makes many concessions to maintain her resilience and walks a fine line between assimilation into white culture and maintaining her Osage roots. Mollie’s appearance reflects the fact that she has Osage values. Grann describes that she is a caring daughter, sister, and mother; he highlights the importance of family and community that Mollie values.
Most importantly, Grann emphasizes Mollie’s position as a leader. In earlier Osage history, a group known as the Travelers in the Mist “would take the lead whenever the tribe was undergoing sudden changes” (30). Grann describes Mollie as a “modern traveler in the mist” (30) as she guides her family through this tumultuous time. When Anna has been missing for three days, “Mollie, in her quiet but forceful way, [presses] everyone into action” (20). When Anna’s body is found, it is Mollie who “[leads] a grim procession toward the creek (23), and at Anna’s funeral, it is Mollie who “[guides] her family and other mourners” (28) to the grave. These action verbs position Mollie as a trustworthy leader. Because she straddles the Osage and white worlds, she is uniquely positioned to guide her family through this time of transition. She speaks English, and she is married to a white man, but she neither forsakes the traditions of the past nor succumbs to the vices some wealthy Osages indulged in after the influx of oil wealth. Mollie acts as a guide for her family as well as the guide for readers through the story. She is the reader’s entry point into the story, and her experience and perspective guide the audience through the atrocities the Osage people face.
Osage resilience and tradition are also highlighted throughout the story through religion and medicine. Anna’s funeral blends Catholic and Osage traditions. Her gravestone reads “Meet Me in Heaven,” but Mollie and her family place food for Anna’s three-day journey to the Osage afterlife known as the Happy Hunting Ground. As Lizzie’s health deteriorates, Mollie requests the help of both Osage medicine men and Western doctors. Lizzie’s death is even described in both Catholic and Osage terms: Grann writes, “Lizzie’s spirit had been claimed by Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior, and by Wah’Kon-Tah, the Great Mystery” (41).
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