On Saturday, November 16, at 2:00 PM, San Mateo County Libraries is excited to host an in-person author talk at Belmont Library with D.M. Rowell, author of Silent Are the Dead (Mud Sawpole #2). The first fifty people in attendance will receive a free giveaway copy of the book!
About the Book
In Never Name the Dead, Mae, a high-powered professional in Silicon Valley, had left the name "Mud" and her Kiowa roots behind a decade ago. After returning home to discover a tribe in disarray and her grandfather missing, Mud had to search for answers, plunging into a web of theft, betrayal and murder. In Silent Are the Dead, Mud Sawpole is back on tribal land and uncovers an illegal fracking operation that threatens the Kiowa's ancestral homeland. When a local businessman involved in artifact thefts is murdered, and a respected tribe elder faces accusation of the crime, Mud searches deep within herself to find answers—and a murderer.
What Critics and Readers Have to Say
When self-exiled Mae “Mud” Sawpole learns of trouble back home in Indian Country, she returns to set things right. Silent Are the Dead is the story of one Kiowa storyteller lovingly told by another. — J. A. Jance (New York Times Best Selling Author)
A thrilling and character-driven mystery, Silent Are the Dead is D.M. Rowell’s best yet. Mud Sawpole makes for a memorable protagonist that readers will not soon forget, and Rowell’s novel mixes Kiowa culture and a razor-sharp, riveting plot to create a worthy installment in the Mud Sawpole series. I was hooked from page one. — Alex Segura (Secret Identity and Alter Ego)
Once again, D.M. Rowell joins Tony Hillerman as a great writer of top mysteries... If Killers of the Flower Moon caught your fancy, you won’t want to miss this one! — Eric Redman (Bones of Hilo; Death in Hilo)
Mud is a hero with a foot in two worlds, trying to reconcile her mixed heritage and her absence from home with her calling to be a storyteller for her tribe. The breakneck plotting in Silent Are the Dead makes it hard to put this book down. I can’t wait for Mud’s next adventure. —Joshua Moehling (And There He Kept Her; Where the Dead Sleep)
Get to Know D.M. Rowell
"Since the age of 12, devouring Trixie Belden mysteries, I've dreamed of writing a murder mystery series. That same year, my grandfather, C. E. Rowell—Kiowa historian, artist, storyteller, and Tribal Elder—pointed at me with his chin, in the style of the old Kiowas, and decreed, 'You. You will keep our traditional stories alive. You are next.'"
D. M. Rowell (Koyh Mi O Boy Dah), like her protagonist, Mud, comes from a long line of Kiowa (kai uh wuh) storytellers within a Plains Indian culture that treasures oral traditions. After a thirty-two-year career spinning stories for Silicon Valley start-ups and corporations, with a few escapes creating award-winning independent documentaries, Rowell started a new chapter, writing the Mud Sawpole mysteries featuring a Silicon Valley professional Kiowa woman solving thefts and murders in Kiowa country. The first in the series, Never Name the Dead, was a 2023 finalist for the Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award.
Add a comment to: Meet D.M. Rowell, Author of Silent Are the Dead