Lone Women by Victor LaValle (Hardcover)

Fiction - Horror - Historical - Fantasy

PUBLISHED: 3/28/2023 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear...

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, California, in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of the "lone women" taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can cultivate it—except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing keeping her alive.

Told in Victor LaValle's signature style, blending historical fiction, shimmering prose, and inventive horror, Lone Women is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—and a portrait of early twentieth-century America like you've never seen.

“Beguiling . . . LaValle is prodigiously talented at playing with stylistic modes, and here he deftly combines Western, suspense, supernatural, and horror—his prose is unfussy and plainspoken, which makes it easier to seamlessly skate across genres. But LaValle’s fluidity when it comes to style is balanced by a focused thematic vision: Through Adelaide (and that steamer trunk), he explores isolation and division across race, within families, and through communities. . . . [The] novel overall is a winning blend of brains and (occasionally violent) thrills. . . . Acrobatic storytelling, both out there and down-home.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A counter to the typical homesteading narrative, this moody and masterful western fires on all cylinders. Readers are sure to be impressed.”—Publishers Weekly