Killers of the Flower Moon

The book investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s—after big oil deposits were discovered beneath their land.[7][8] After the Osage Native Americans are awarded rights in court to the profits made from oil deposits found on their land, the Osage people prepare for receiving the wealth to which they are legally entitled from sales of their oil deposits.

However, a long and complex process of custodianship is imposed upon the distribution of the profits from the sales being made for very high profits and very few if any of the Osage people see any of this money. Still, they are the legal owners of the land and its profits, which is irksome to some of the administrators of the land who have a history of poor relations with the Osage people. Those elements hostile to the Osage people then decide that they could greatly simplify their profit mongering of the oil profits by eliminating those whom they consider to be operating as the "middle man" before they can abscond with the oil profits.

The Osage people are viewed as the "middle man" and a complex plot is hatched and put into place to eliminate the Osage people inheriting this wealth from oil profits on a one-by-one basis by any means possible. Officially, the count of the murdered full-blood wealthy Osage native Americans reaches at least 20, but Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil.[9] The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.

The review aggregator website Book Marks indicated that overall Killers of the Flower Moon received rave reviews from literary critics.[10]

Writing for The New York Times, Dave Eggers called the book "riveting"[11] and wrote, "in these last pages, Grann takes what was already a fascinating and disciplined recording of a forgotten chapter in American history, and with the help of contemporary Osage tribe members, he illuminates a sickening conspiracy that goes far deeper than those four years of horror. It will sear your soul."[11]

Sean Woods of Rolling Stone praised Grann's book, noting, "In his masterful new book...Grann chronicles a tale of murder, betrayal, heroism and a nation's struggle to leave its frontier culture behind and enter the modern world... Filled with almost mythic characters from our past – stoic Texas Rangers, corrupt robber barons, private detectives, and murderous desperadoes like the Al Spencer gang – Grann's story amounts to a secret history of the American frontier."[12]

A reviewer of Publishers Weekly stated "New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Lost City of Z) burnishes his reputation as a brilliant storyteller in this gripping true-crime narrative, which revisits a baffling and frightening—and relatively unknown—spree of murders occurring mostly in Oklahoma during the 1920s."[13]

Ed Vulliamy of The Guardian wrote, "The genocide by white America against Native nations during the century leading up to Grann’s period is a metaphor for humanity’s decimation of the natural world which the Natives saw as sacred. Grann’s book is a timely and disturbing chapter in the original, terrible atrocity."[14]

The book is being adapted into a film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, on a $200M+ budget.[15][16] It will be released theatrically by Paramount Pictures and streaming on Apple TV+.[17] Currently, there is no release date for the film.

• Official website
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI on YouTube
• DiCaprio and Abrams Team Up in Killers of the Flower Moon - Collider on YouTube