Omitting folder in URLs and prevent people visiting said folder

I have one small issue saving the uri of the author. When I search ‘jane doe’ I get no results. If I search ‘jane’ or ‘doe’ I get the expected results. I imagine this is because of the hyphen in the uri.

Author: author/jane-doe

I am using the plugin search controller with this modification

Is there a solution for this? Perhaps I can save a hidden field with the author title?