Lone Women: A Novel

After the thrilling success of the terrifying The Changeling, Victor LeValle returns with his next novel, Lone Women, which is equally moving and powerful and terrifying.

The year is 1915 and Adelaide Henry is in Montana taking over a cabin and piece of land as a homesteader. What everyone doesn’t know is that Adelaide fled California after the mysterious deaths of her parents, and with her is this incredibly heavy trunk. For those unlucky few that find her secret key and unlock it, they end up horrifically disfigured or dead.

Adelaide tries her best to live and grow in this harsh land as winter sets in, watching out for those willing to get rid of her and take anything she has of value. As she begins to make friends and settle in, we get to meet some interesting characters who have some very selfish and vengeful goals.

LaValle has written a modern American gothic novel in Lone Women, with joys and horrors, along with an interracial lesbian couple and a cross-dressing child, that show his talent for writing a story of real people with very real problems, except for perhaps what’s in that trunk.