Never Name the Dead

Praise

Praise for Never Name the Dead:
“Never Name the Dead weaves a tale of timely Native issues like fracking and poverty with a breathless mystery.”
—Buzzfeed

“[A] debut wrapped in Kiowa history, stories, and culture . . . Recommended for readers of David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts.”
—Library Journal

“Rowell’s Never Name the Dead is an impressive debut, charting a woman’s return from Silicon Valley to her roots, the Kiowa tribal land in Oklahoma, where she finds a divided tribe, land threatened by fracking, and her own grandfather missing and possibly framed for a crime she knows he didn’t commit. The novel then becomes a detective story with a deep sense of place and history. Rowell brings notes of poetry to the dark tale of corruption.”
—CrimeReads

“[Never Name the Dead] may join the ranks of Native American books along the veins of Tony Hillerman and Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn/Chee mysteries.”
—Midwest Book Review

“Greed and murder face off against the power of traditional Native American wisdom and rituals in a gripping tale set in Oklahoma on a reservation fighting to preserve the Kiowa culture and way of life. Mystical and magical, D. M. Rowell’s debut novel puts her in the ranks of Tony Hillerman, with a resolute female sleuth whose name is Mud but whose vision, purified with sacred smoke, is crystal clear.”
—Eric Redman, award-nominated author of Bones of Hilo

“Oil frackers and regalia looters meet their match in Mae “Mud” Sawpole, a Silicon Valley exec and former college softball slugger who returns to her Kiowa homeland in Oklahoma to settle the score.”
—Kris Lackey, author of the Maytubby-Bond series