Laurie L. Dove’s ‘Mask of the Deer Woman’ is well worth your time

BY MICAELA SULLIVAN

Multimedia Journalist

I would like to start this book review with the following disclaimers: Spoilers of the storyline and eventual outcome are entailed, as well as the discussion of violent crimes. 

When you pick any ordinary crime book, you think, “bad guy, good guy.” Bad event, good ending. However, Laurie L. Dove brings a new look at crime fiction, with a slow start and a very fast ending. 

First, I’d like to introduce the ever-so-frustrating—but relatable—main character, Carrie Starr. 

In the story, Starr has been hired as the new tribal marshal of the fictional Saliquaw Nation, based in Oklahoma. 

However, the reason she is there is a lot deeper than just taking a new job. Starr had taken up the job as a last resort. Tribal officer was the only offer she had gotten after giving her daughter's murderer the “Chicago six.”

Throughout the story, Starr’s character consistently changes as she faces both herself and the guilt of not saving her daughter. 

At the beginning of the book, Starr has just arrived at the reservation and seems almost annoyed that she has to deal with a mother about her missing child. To put it best, Starr is very arrogant and does not care. 

However, by the end of the book, she changes in the way that she wants to prevent other girls from having the same fate as her daughter.

Starr’s daughter plays a big role in the character of Starr, even if she is dead. Her daughter, Quinn, was murdered. The book refers to her autopsy results as an overdose, most likely due to some type of laced drugs. 

However, the consistent theme throughout the book with Starr is that her grief is keeping her from wanting to help other mothers. 

This grief clashes with the fact that her job is to go through cold cases on the reservation and try to find the missing girls: the most recent one being Chenoa Cloud. 

Chenoa is the daughter of Odeina Cloud, who is a new college student on the search for American burying beetles— “Her ticket to a different life.”

You would think, “Oh, she went missing for some bugs?”

Right, but also wrong. These bugs are extremely important because they are an endangered species, thought to be extinct. 

If Chenoa can prove that they exist on the reservation, she would “be awarded grant money and a Smithsonian job at the end of the rainbow.” This would give Chenoa the ticket to a whole different life. 

These bugs are important because they can ruin everything Horace-Wayne-Holder has been planning for years. 

Horace-Wayne-Holder is the mayor of Dexter Springs. He is in partnership with Blackstream Oil and uses his position to recruit people to pull oil from the land, and more specifically, to build a road system for easy access to the site.

However, if Chenoa finds proof of the bugs existing where they are planning on building the roads, conservation projects will be instituted and fines for habitat damage will be imposed. 

In other words, Chenoa is a major threat to Holder, Blackstream Oil and Helen Taylor, the mayor of Dexter Springs. 

Long story short, Holder ransacked Chenoa's van, where she was searching. Her cell phone was broken and dead, leaving Chenoa with no way to communicate with anyone and no way home. She did, however, continue to search for the American Burying Beetles. 

At this time, Starr has slowly started to gather what is going on, why Chenoa might have disappeared and where she could be. 

In a way, this can be seen as Starr’s redemption for saving someone's daughter, even if it wasn’t her own. 

Because there is so much to the story, I will wrap this up. Starr followed Chenoa’s trail of where she thought she was. She ends up being kidnapped and brought to the place where Chenoa is being held. 

In the end, Chenoa saves Starr’s life instead of the other way around, and finally accepts herself and her grief of losing her child. 

It is important to bring up who the ‘Deer Woman' is. Deer Woman is known to be the spirit of a very angry woman, who was raped and left for the dead in the woods. 

Deer Woman can stand for many things, but I think what she stands for the most is vengeance and protection of the innocent. She is meant to bring justice to those who get away with things they shouldn’t and be a protector of innocent women. 

At the end of the book, you would think it would be Starr who would be the one who would become one with the Deer Woman; however, it is Chenoa who becomes one with her and protects Starr.

I think that is one of the strongest themes of the book, protecting the people who protect others. Starr had spent so much time regretting what she should or should not have done to keep her daughter safe. She also wanted to make sure that she could protect other innocent young women on the reservation. 

This is where I would like to connect this book to the real world. I was introduced to this book through my crime fiction class, instructed by Professor Lisa Thomas-McNew at Tarleton State University. 

When I first heard about the book in class, I was honestly excited because it sounded very creepy.

However, I did not find out how much this book connects to the actual world until I actually started reading it. 

This book shows how real it is for missing women and their families, especially in places like Reservations, where these cases can easily be overlooked.

While there are many different important moments and phrases in this book, I think the saddest one was when Lucy Cloud, Chenoa's grandmother, said, “If you want to find a girl, you should follow a man.”

Right after this statement, Starr did in fact follow a man and find Chenoa. I feel that this theme was well followed throughout the whole book and specifically the ending. 

My professor has been teaching the crime fiction course for the past 17 years. She believes that books like these are good for everyone because it generates interest in things that are occurring. 

“It allows people to have—in an entertaining way—to interact with writing and with issues that might come up,” Thomas-McNew said.

As we talked about Starr, we both recognized that of all her characteristics, her grief really does define who she is and how she goes about things at the beginning of the book. 

“Starr is a flawed character….she’s processing her grief as she is living, which a lot of people do. Just because you’re experiencing grief from an event doesn’t mean that you get to stop living,” Thomas-McNew said. “You get to see that arc of grief that occurs when it first happens and how she begins to resolve that grief into something that she can manage, hopefully in a more healthy way than in the first part of the book,” Thomas-McNew said. 

To end this review, I would like to discuss why the Deer Woman is important. 

“I think one thing that's interesting about this book is that Deer Woman comes across with the idea of vengeance and revenge. But I think Deer Woman comes across as a symbol in many ways of justice and protection,” Thomas-McNew said. 

This book was truly a good read and a reality check to what really goes on reservations in regards to missing women. 

Altogether, I would highly recommend this book if you want to read a slow-burning crime fiction that keeps you on your toes and provides you the opportunity to think critically while attempting to solve crime.