Lone Women

Lone Women is a novel set around 1915 about Adelaide Henry, a lone black woman who travels alone to Montana lugging a mysterious locked steamer trunk and her family's secrets.

I enjoyed all the spooky elements of this story, and how the steamer trunk secret is a slow burn horror reveal, starting from Adelaide's fear when anybody looks too closely at it, and continuing with disappearing folks and other horror when it opens. However, about three quarters through there's a full reveal that feels disingenuous to the reader with details that Adelaide has elided the whole time. This moment just felt a little contrived to me, and as a reader I didn't believe that she had a reason not to mention it until then. I wrote some more spoiler-filled thoughts in this comment.

Overall, I dug the frontier vibes, folks learning to trust and care for strangers (literally, people who are strange to them), the horror elements, and the focus on variously marginalized folks trying to get by and coming together in sisterhood.

Sometimes I'm initially lukewarm about a book, but ultimately over time I forget the details and instead remember how the book made me feel, such that I look back on it more fondly. It's happened enough times that I have a pretty good hunch that's gonna happen with this one. Still, I like to base my reviews on how I felt within a day of completing it, so that's what I'll do here.

The algorithms are gonna peg this one as historical fiction horror, but really it's a western at heart; this kind of story couldn't really be told anywhere other than the American West, and being set in 1915 it almost feels like this is the absolute latest this could be told. We have a protagonist who is leaving the only home she's ever known for middle-of-nowhere Montana because her family had just been murdered (she knew how, but the reader doesn't find out until later), and she's lugging a prohibitively heavy trunk with her as her only possession. It's an instant hook.

The book is divvied up into thirds, and with extremely short chapters (I think there are over 60 for just a 285-page book), things kept moving along nicely. However, the first third was told solely from Adelaide's perspective, and then the middle and end sections bounced around between multiple different characters' points of view. I found myself liking Adelaide so much that I wished I'd just stayed with her the whole time rather than seeing too much of what else was going on, but that's more of a personal preference than a legitimate complaint.

We touch on themes of loneliness, community, environmental survival, racial isolation, gender expression, complicated family dynamics, we got lesbians, we got technological changes. And also blatant supernatural phenomenon and literal monsters. This book was definitely aiming to do a lot. But at least it didn't come off as a series of checklist items being ticked off for their own sake or the "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" approach. I've read this kind of story before and seen it done better, but I've also seen it done much worse. But ask me again in a few months and I'll probably rave about this one in hindsight.

I had such a good time with this read. It was compelling but still felt like it leaned literary, which is my preference.

All of the ladies grew on me. If anything I wish I had more time with them. And the Mudges for that matter since they were pretty interesting and horrifying at the same time. I thought LaValle wrote all of them with a level of compassion that I appreciated.

There are a number of startling turns of events here. Shocking moments you don’t see coming, or I didn’t. Made for an engaging reading experience.

The nature of Elizabeth is interesting to contemplate given Mrs. Reeds’ revelations. But I feel like she’s different things to different people with different lore. The idea is just that depending on the culture and the values that people use to make sense of her, she’s loved, respected, or hated. That’s my preferred take.