Staff Pick
Victor LaValle is so good! Just — so good. His new book blends horror with the myth of the American West, in a story about Adelaide, a woman who will go to extraordinary lengths to protect both herself and the secret of her family's curse. This book is so inventive, so startling, so pleasantly strange, and has one of the most satisfying endings I've read in a long time. Already, I know it's one of the books that's going to get better the more I think about it. Recommended By Kelsey F., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Blue skies, empty land — and enough room to hide away a horrifying secret. Or is there? Discover a haunting new vision of the American West from the award-winning author of The Changeling.
If the literary gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, the result would be Victor LaValle. — Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See
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.
Review
"Victor LaValle is one of the finest writers around — puzzling but never abstruse, compassionate but never pitying." — Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
Review
"Nobody is better at combining daily struggles and the supernatural than LaValle." — Bookforum
Review
"If the literary gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, and threw in several fistfuls of twenty-first-century attitude, the result would be Victor LaValle." — Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land
About the Author
Victor LaValle is the author of seven works of fiction: four novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories. His novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Nation, and Publishers Weekly, among others. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He lives in the Bronx with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.