Book Review: Mask of the Deer Woman by Laurie L. Dove
By Jeff Ayers
January 28, 2025
Carrie Starr, a former police detective in Chicago, after a tragedy, takes on the job of marshal on a Native American reservation in Dove’s stellar debut novel.
Her father grew up on this reservation, and she’s still considered an outsider in her new role. A college student named Chenoa Cloud has gone missing, and her family wants answers. She was researching a specific type of insect, and when Carrie learns of other young women who have disappeared over the past few years, she has to wonder if Chenoa is another statistic or simply ran away. Her family knows Chenoa didn’t simply leave. The investigation haunts Carrie as it brings back painful memories she wants to forget, and when she starts having visions of a woman with deer antlers leading her somewhere, she begins to question reality. Carrie wants to feel at home in her new life, but the folks there have other ideas. It doesn’t help that the town agrees to sell land around the border of the reservation for fracking, which could cause lasting damage to their environment and very way of life.
Dove’s novel explores life on the reservation in painful but elegant detail and mixes that with mystery. Carrie’s search for acceptance and peace while overcoming the odds showcases the best of dark crime novels. And what is the Deer Woman’s true motive?