Laurie L. Dove's atmospheric, frequently grim, and emotionally charged debut, Mask of the Deer Woman, features a former police detective trying to outrun her old life by taking a job as tribal marshal on an Oklahoma reservation. Carrie Starr is half Indigenous, but out of touch with that part of her personal history. Tasked with solving the cold cases of a growing number of missing Indigenous women and girls, she is inclined to focus instead on her own lost daughter.
Marshal Starr is the novel's protagonist, but Mask of the Deer Woman's chapters shift among various characters, beginning with Chenoa Cloud, a college student from the rez who is determined to prove the presence of an endangered beetle on her tribal grounds. Documenting an endangered species promises to earn her funding and a job--a way off the rez for good, and not like the others "who left and never came back, or who couldn't come back." Chenoa's disappearance into the Saliquaw Nation's backcountry sets the stage for Starr's arrival. The Bureau of Indian Affairs job is a last resort for Starr, and not one she relishes, but her daughter's murder and the man she subsequently gunned down ended her career as detective. Trading on her late father's Saliquaw identity earns her a poorly appointed cinder-block office, a BIA-issued, broken-down Ford Bronco, and the locals' distrust. She carries a bottle of Jameson in her backpack and under the Bronco's front seat, and a joint in her shirt pocket. Each missing young woman blurs into her daughter, and she flinches away from "the terrain she'd have to cover in the process. The dark space of whatever was out there. Caves. Old mines. Her own mind."
Beyond the intoxicants she takes to escape her pain, Starr is knocked off-balance by tales of the Deer Woman. Part monster, part avenging angel, part capricious force of nature, this legend seems to follow the disoriented marshal, although the boundaries between magic, hallucination, and self-medicated grief are unclear. To boot, the rez is at odds with the nearest town, and the tribal council must field a controversial proposal to frack for oil, with associated infrastructure. Political and commercial machinations accompany the missing women and the struggling tribal marshal in a novel of grief, violence, community, empowerment, and pain.
This dark mystery will thrill readers and immerse them in a powerfully portrayed world of great losses and high stakes. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia
Shelf Talker: A disgraced police detective takes a job as tribal marshal to pursue the mystery of a series of missing women, but has trouble seeing beyond her own lost daughter.