Laurie Dove’s first novel beat the odds. Not only is it rare for a novelist’s maiden effort to see print, Dove’s book was chosen out of more than 5,000 others submitted to Penguin Random House, the nation’s largest publisher.
“It really felt like winning the lottery because the odds of that are pretty unbelievable,” Dove, of Valley Center, said.
Then again, a lifetime of professional writing proceeded “Mask of the Deer Woman,” which will officially be released Jan. 21. The book, set on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma, is described by its publisher as “a powerful thriller that explores the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women.”
Dove, who is of Native American heritage, grew up on a farm near Furley. She got her first paid freelance writing job at 18. She graduated from Bethel College, where she was editor of the paper and worked for the Newton Kansan. She went on to write for the Hutchinson News, Wichita Business Journal and Wichita Eagle.
Longtime readers of The Active Age may remember her articles appearing in this publication in the early 2000s.
“I met some of the most interesting people I was able to interview” while writing for The Active Age, Dove said. “My husband’s grandmother cut out the articles and made scrapbooks of them.”
In her 50s, Dove earned a master’s degree from Harvard in literature and creative writing, turning her attention to made-up stories.
“Mask” grew out of a short story Dove wrote for a suspense writing class around 2018.
“I had this scenario and character pop into my head so clearly. I thought, ‘There’s a lot more to this story.’”
With her novel’s ending written, Dove cranked out 60,000 more words in a few days. She spent another three years writing and re-writing it. She was in the process of trying to find a literary agent when she saw an announcement that Berkley, an imprint of Penguin, was having an open submission program, created for writers who were not represented by agents and whose work was the type not typically chosen by mainstream publishers.
Dove submitted the requested 10-page excerpt but didn’t get her hopes up. In fact, she was more concerned about working on her second novel.
“My whole focus is to do the work,” she said. “I can’t control the results, but I can control my efforts.”
Her book wound up being one of four chosen for publication.
Dove drew on her background in creating her protagonist, a Chicago detective named Carrie Starr. “After her daughter’s death, she’s steeped in grief. She takes a job on a tribal reservation in northeast Oklahoma. Her father was raised on the reservation, but to her knowledge, she’s never been there. She was removed from this part of her cultural heritage.”
Dove, who was adopted and raised by a non-indigenous family, portrays Starr as “an outsider to this reservation because in no way did I want to write this as if these were things I knew from lived experience.”
The book also explores the “deep feelings we have for children as they grow and move into the wider world on their own” and the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women. “According to the FBI, there are 5,500 indigenous women who are missing,” Dove said. “The numbers are estimated to be much higher because it’s underreported.”
Dove and her husband, Chad, have five children, all grown except for their youngest daughter, a junior in high school.
Dove has also dabbled in local politics, serving as mayor of Valley Center for four years and on the City Council for two years before that. But she’s focused on the literary life now. Berkley has bought two more books from her as part of a projected series featuring Starr. Refering to Penguin’s well-known logo, she said, “It’s really neat that, after seeing that little penguin all these years, to see it on my book.”
Book launch
Watermark Books will host a book launch for Laurie Dove’s “Mask of the Deer Woman” at 6 p.m. on Jan. 23. Preorders are now available at watermarkbooks.com.
