Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.
The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.
Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.
I see all the glowing reviews for this one, but I have to admit, while I enjoyed this read, I didn’t love it. Nor do I understand the love for it.
Okay, well, wait…I do get the love for the strong women portrayed here, especially those classically underappreciated and underrepresented in fiction. I will say Lavalle excelled in that aspect.
And don’t get me wrong, there’s a whole lot of good here. While it takes far too long for Adelaide and her mysterious trunk to get to Montana, once she’s there, I really enjoyed the setting, as well as the ongoing mystery of the trunk, and the additional mystery of Adelaide Henry and some of the other key players.
Lavalle takes his time—again, too much time, I believe—setting up those mysteries, those key players, the town…and, for a reasonably compact story (around 280 pages), he’s got a lot going on. Almost too much. This could have been—or maybe I just wanted it to be—a far more streamlined story. I feel it would have had more punch if it had been.
This novel is listed as a horror novel, and I’m the first one to say I don’t need horror on every page. I enjoy a slow build, a simmering dread. However, when a novel is marketed as a horror novel and then the storyline pretty much has most of the horror happen off stage…well, that ain’t much of a horror novel, is it? Lavalle sets up some really good, potentially terrifying scenes…and then he gently takes the readers’ heads and turns them away right when it’s getting good.
This is not a horror novel in a historical setting. It’s a historical fiction novel with some really strong, capable, underrepresented races who have a couple of horrific moments.
I won’t be the one to spoil what’s going on here. I went into this novel cold, and I think that’s the best approach. But, it just feels like Lavalle wants this book to be a lot of things, so he wraps those things around a story that’s reasonably light, and then adds a bunch of subplots to beef it up, keeps most of the horror offscreen, and it all ends up somewhat messy in the end.
It didn’t quite scratch the itch I felt it was going for. Maybe it will for you.
