Add to ORKGThis dissertation consists of a novel entitled Skinning the Deer: A Love Story. Alternating between the landscapes of New Mexico and rural Maine, the novel examines the life of tortured lesbian Hannah Huff and the brutal excision of her glorious wings—those magical appendages she grew in secret—the two downy white miracles she believed would be her ticket out of Monkstown, Maine, a desperate landscape of backwoods trailers, dogs, and family members, where her only interactions are either detached or violent. While the novel alternates between Hannah as an adult and Hannah as a child, it is first and foremost a coming-of-age story and a journey into the past to reclaim lost innocence. Inspired by the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dorothy ...