Honor, the debut novel by A.B. Dozier, is set in 1920s Baltimore and follows Bella, a fiercely independent young woman navigating immigrant life while resisting the control of the Black Hand, an organized crime network that exploits and traffics vulnerable women. After her murder draws massive public attention, the investigation into her death exposes a vast web of interconnected crimes and reveals how the choices of a community, both complicit and resistant, allowed such violence to take hold.
Honor will be published on March 9, 2027, by Blair Publishing and is available for preorder now.
Dozier is a longtime human rights advocate who, while researching her family history in spring 2020, discovered a century-old Baltimore newspaper article about an unidentified body and followed it into the story that became Honor. She holds a BA in International Relations from Randolph Macon Woman’s College and an MA in Conflict Resolution from Lancaster University, and lives in Washington, DC with her husband, three sons, and a Maine Coon.
Debutiful is honored to reveal Compensation‘s cover, designed by Laura Williams, along with a Q&A with Dozier about its creation.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
I thought about it, of course, and had some very, very vague ideas but no specific image in mind. I probably had a clearer picture of what I wouldn’t like, but that didn’t become an issue at all. What I wanted the most was for it to be eye catching. If I was walking past a display of books in a bookstore or at the library, if I was in an airport or a train station shop with limited time to choose something, would the cover of Honor grab my attention and make me want to pick it up to know more?
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
It was incredibly easy. The Blair team sent me an image of the cover Laura had created, shared the reasons why they liked it, and asked what I thought. I could immediately see exactly why they liked it so much. I loved it, too.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
All these stories, these people, and this book have existed in my head for so many years–this kind of private little world swirling around up there. To see Honor distilled and pulled together into a single visual image is a little bit of a shock. The closest comparison I can make is to someone looking into a mirror or seeing a photograph of themself for the first time. It’s curious and wonderful.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
Honor explores the identity of a young woman who has been killed as told through the detailed stories of many different people who interacted with her in life and in death. I think the cover, with fragments of photographs circling the image of a woman’s face, also fragmented, conveys that brilliantly.