Mask of the Deer Woman

Mask of the Deer Woman

by Laurie L. Dove
Genres: Fiction / Indigenous, Fiction / Thrillers / Crime
Length: 9:37
Narrator: Isabella Star Lablanc
Published on January 21, 2025
Pages: 336
Format: Audiobook Source: Audible
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To find a missing young woman, the new tribal marshal must also find herself.

At rock bottom following her daughter’s death, ex–Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation where he was raised, but the tribe needs a new marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home.

In the past decade, too many young women have disappeared from the rez. Some have ended up dead, others just…gone. Now local college student Chenoa Cloud is missing, and Starr falls into an investigation that leaves her drowning in memories of her daughter—the girl she failed to save.

Starr feels lost in this place she thought would welcome her. And when she catches a glimpse of a figure from her father’s stories, with the body of a woman and the antlers of a deer, Starr can’t shake the feeling that the fearsome spirit is watching her, following her.

What she doesn’t know is whether Deer Woman is here to guide her or to seek vengeance for the lost daughters that Starr can never bring home.

I hadn’t heard of this book before I started listening to it so I didn’t know what to expect. I was interested in the story of a Native American woman working on the disappearances of Native American women. This story also adds in a strong fantasy/thriller/possibly edging into horror touch.

Starr is a very damaged character. Her daughter has died and she lost her detective job in Chicago in the aftermath of that. She doesn’t have a cultural connection to the reservation that her father grew up on. She isn’t welcomed because she is seen as an outsider coming in as law enforcement. She doesn’t particularly care though because she spends most of her time either drinking or getting high.

Starr arrived on the reservation right after a local woman named Chenoa went missing. Chenoa’s mother is pushing hard to find her. Starr’s dismissal of her concerns was unexpected. She doesn’t care to investigate. That wasn’t the direction that I expected this story to go in. Starr is just another law enforcement officer who writes off women from the reservation.

Starr soon starts to see outlines of a woman with antlers and hear legends of Deer Woman. She is supposed to avenge women. Is Starr’s drug addled mind deserting her or is Deer Woman helping on this case and forcing her to become interested?

“What if we took an eye for an eye,” thought Starr. “Would women still be raped, beaten, abused, taken, killed, hurt? What if women blew that shit up? Stopped waiting for cops or detectives like her who failed anyway.”

I liked that none of the characters in this book are who they appear to be on the surface.

There is a lot of talk about the abuse and murder of women. (There is also the killing of a dog in case you are like me and can listen to stories about humans getting killed all day long but the dog dying still makes me sad.)

I enjoyed the afterword. The author is Native American but was adopted by a non-Indigenous family as a child. She said that it informed her writing of Starr as an outsider to life on the reservation.