In Walks a Woman

IWAW loves a great mystery/thriller, and if you do, too, you should treat yourself to reading Laurie Dove’s 2025 novel, Mask of the Deer Woman. There will be NO spoilers in this show!  Sonja and Vanessa visit with Dove about the compelling issues underpinning this gripping story. There are so many positive reviews of the novel, so here’s just a sample:  “A beautifully written tale about the Indigenous girls who disappear twice, once in life and once in the news. Clever, elegant and utterly compelling, Mask of the Deer Woman is a brilliant exploration of identity and the struggle of being separated from one’s culture. Hypnotic and beguiling, I was hooked from the first sentence.”—Christina McDonald, USA Today bestselling author of These Still Black Waters.In our interview, Dove talks about what sparked her desire to write Mask of the Deer Woman, why she felt compelled to turn to fiction, and how she understands the role of storytelling.  Plus, this is only the first of the Carrie Starr novels, and Dove lets us in on when we can expect the next installment.  Along the way, Sonja defends The Book of Kells, and Vanessa wishes she could be in a book club with Starr. 

In his famous 1841 essay, “Self Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.”  Emerson was a great writer, but to think he accomplished that all by himself would be a significant misunderstanding of how self reliant he really was. In his brilliant study of five female Transcendentalist thinkers, Dr. Randall Fuller pulls back the curtain to show that behind Emerson was his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, who served as mentor and a role model for thinking boldly and writing with a unique voice. Dr. Fuller helps us explore all the questions this revelation naturally prompts: Did Emerson plagiarize his aunt?  Did she see it as a collaboration?  Did he owe her more credit?  And who were the other women in the Transcendentalist movement?  One was married to Emerson and the other to Nathaniel Hawthorne, so why don’t we know more about them? Or is that precisely why we don’t know more about them? Why is Concord Massachusetts considered the epicenter of this movement when Margaret Fuller’s weekly conversation circles, attended primarily by women, were held in a bookstore in Boston?  Join Sonja and Vanessa as they learn from Dr. Fuller why we probably need to rewrite the story of American Transcendentalism to foreground women like Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller.  Along the way, Sonja vaguely hints at her feelings for Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Vanessa fails a few quizzes. REFERENCES:Check out all of Randall Fuller’s books–you’ll love them!From Battlefields Rising: How The Civil War Transformed American Literature, The Book That Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation, Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists, Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism.