Book Review: ‘Mask Of The Deer Woman'
Chasing The Ghosts Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women
By Katherine Xiong
The premise of Laurie L. Dove’s debut novel “Mask of the Deer Woman” promises drama and intrigue. Its protagonist Carrie Starr, a hard-drinking detective with a tragic backstory, has recently become Tribal Marshal at the (fictional) Saliquaw Reservation where her father grew up.
Starr seeks to close the many cold cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women (a 2016 report by the The National Institute of Justice indicates that more than 80% of Native Americans have experienced violence), but police indifference and other systemic failures make her difficult job nearly impossible. She writes:
It was part of what made tracing the disappearances of Indigenous women so difficult; it could be days, even weeks, before they were truly missed. Then a quandary: where to report them missing? Until Starr’s arrival, there hadn’t been a tribal police presence for years.
As tribal numbers had dwindled on this reservation, the lack of on-site law enforcement created a gap that local agencies couldn’t fill, and they were quick to blame alcohol or drugs, runaways, sometimes prostitution.
Even when a missing woman from the rez had last been seen in the county, the sheriff’s office simply countered that the reservation was not their jurisdiction and did nothing at all.
Dove, an award-winning journalist, seems an ideal candidate to dramatize such a shocking injustice surrounding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). That said, “Mask of the Deer Woman’s” early chapters stray from the high-stakes police procedural narrative as Dove diverts the reader’s attention to showcase her character’s flaws.
For example, following a meeting with the furious mother of Chenoa Cloud, a vanished Native American girl, Starr consciously links Chenoa’s vanishing to the tragic death of her own daughter. Despite having experienced law enforcement’s failures to protect MMIW, Starr illogically trivializes Chenoa’s disappearance with dismissive speculation that the young woman had “[gotten] in with a bad crowd. Maybe drugs”
The novel’s schizophrenic mixture of Starr’s own trauma compromising her investigation amidst a human rights catastrophe represents “Mask of the Deer Woman’s” tragic flaw.
The novel also struggles to formulate an effective political commentary, as its villains remain evil caricatures rather than developed characters. For example, the oil and gas developer Holder uses the language of colonialism as he refers to the reservation as “a wasteland” and the planned fracking operation as “a copper mine in the Congo: nothing but profit, assuming you could reach a deal with the natives.”
Dove also introduces us to crooked small-town mayor Helen with a similar lack of subtlety: “embezzlement was such a dirty word,” Helen says to herself, followed by, “she might be willing to consider the statehouse. If the kickbacks were right.”
There are many powerful moments in the novel. The mythology of the Deer Woman, a vengeful being whose appearances serve as moral warnings to those who encounter her, shines with a startling intensity as it shapes Starr’s consciousness. In one retelling, her father’s friend recounts a fateful encounter:
Deer Woman? I saw her once [...] It had been hard going for months. So, when we came upon the deer, my old man lined up the shot while it stood there like a statue. I mean, it just stood there, broadside like a target, waiting, nose lifted, nostrils flaring like it had picked up our scent. But instead of running, it stayed.
It was a heart shot, he said. Dropped the buck dead. We knew we’d have to work fast to field dress him, and packing him out would be a long, slow walk in the dark. But I didn’t care. I wanted my dad to take the head; I’d seen an antlered skull mount in a hunting magazine, and I’d always thought about it, how cool it would be to have a bare skull and antlers on the wall. And this deer had a trophy rack, probably fourteen points. Biggest one I’d ever seen.
But when my old man turned the deer over to gut it— [...] and when he cut it open? Female. It was a doe, not a buck. [...] I heard later that it happens sometimes, that maybe one in one thousand female deer grow antlers. And female caribou have antlers, but not our deer, not what we have here.
These deer aren’t supposed to have them. [...] and she had a fawn. Inside [...] Fully developed, ready for birth, like it could kick its way clean out of her. It wasn’t just that this buck—what we’d thought was a buck—had turned out to be a doe with antlers.
It was that she had a fawn to care for, and it was still alive, inside her. What were we supposed to do? It wouldn’t have lived much longer. So I sat there, on my knees, watching it move inside the caul while my old man skinned and parted the doe. Your dad didn’t want any part of it, so I cut through the caul and sawed clear through the fawn’s throat.
Thing is, he said, turning back to look her in the eyes, anything . . . anyone . . . I’ve loved has been taken from me. Ever since that day. Every single time. It’s a curse.
While there is much to admire I cannot help but think that there is a version of “Mask of the Deer Woman” that could have done justice to the tragic, timely subject matter while honoring Starr’s jaded anti-hero.
MASK OF THE DEER WOMAN| Laurie L. Dove| Berkley | 224 pp. | Jan 21, 2025 | $29
Katherine Xiong is a writer and independent book critic. You can find more information about her and her work here.