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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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LONE WOMEN

Victor LaValle

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.
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.

Victor LaValle is the author of seven works of fiction: four novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories. Most recently published is the award-winning THE CHANGELING, a soon-to-be-adapted drama series for Apple TV starring and executive produced by LaKeith Stanfield, written by Kelly Marcel, and directed by Melina Matsoukas. Most of Victor's novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists of 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 New York City with his family and teaches at Columbia University.
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Published 2023-03-21 by One World

Comments

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

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.

Victor LaValle is one of the best writers of speculative horror we have, and Lone Women is an absolute page turner.

LONE WOMEN is named A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK by GoodReads; BookPage; The Orange County Register; Book Riot; Borrow, Read, Repeat; Books, Bones & Buffy

A pervasively uneasy and brilliantly plotted horror-western hybrid... Readers are led to Big Sandy to meet its marginalized and outcast citizens, feel the wide open, unforgiving landscape, and watch the captivating drama, both real and supernatural, unfold. Told with a pulp sensibility, this masterfully paced tale, with short chapters, heart-pounding suspense, a monster that is both utterly terrifying and heartbreakingly beautiful, and a story line focused on the power of women, bursts off the page. Great for fans of thought-provoking horror that probes the inherent terror of marginalization without sacrificing the visceral action, as written by Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Violent delights abound in this historical horror tale from one of the genre's most exciting voices... Rich in secrets, suspense, and dread, LaValle's latest is a gripping and heartfelt thriller about how lone women survive a harsh world.

Transforms genre in an arresting blend of history, horror, and suspense.

LaValle's vivid, three-dimensional characters are always a draw, and this fascinating cast is a real treat, plus he introduces lesser-known pieces of American history in a way that never feels didactic... Highly recommended for historical fiction readers just as much as die-hard horror fans.

Rather than make its setting a spectacle of funny clothes and backwards customs, Lone Women delivers a 1915 in which people sometimes swear like it's 2022 and seek the same kind of gender parity and racial harmony that anyone with a Twitter account is no doubt familiar with. In lesser hands, the effect might be anachronistic; in LaValle's, it's enlightening.

If the literary gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison, the result would be Victor LaValle.

LaValle's work is always darkly magical, suspenseful and deeply compelling... in Lone Women LaValle tells the story of Adelaide, a homesteading woman in 1915 Montana with secrets - and a giant steamer trunk. Expect richness, surprise and beauty from this visionary new rendering of the historic American West.

Shirley Jackson Award winner LaValle beautifully captures the vastness of the 1915 Montana frontier and the subtlety of terror in his latest... A chilling tale of isolation, shame, regret, and survival, LaValle's novel is incredibly immersive - readers will hear the wind of the prairie, smell the wood smoke, see the bloodstains, and feel the fear... LaValle grips readers with the subtle terror of inevitability, only to hold tight with tenderness.