The
Outlander
Non-series
Gil
Adamson
Ecco
Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-06-149125-X (006149125X)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-149125-2 (9780061491252)
Publication Date: April 2008
List Price: $25.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): In 1903, a mysterious young woman flees alone across
the west, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, Mary
Boulton has just become a widow – and her husband’s
killer. As
bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is
tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless
brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger
brother’s death. Responding to little more than the primitive
fight for
life, the widow retreats ever deeper into the wilderness –
and into the
wilds of her own mind – encountering an unforgettable cast of
eccentrics along the way.
With the stunning prose and
captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier’s Cold
Mountain or
early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson’s intoxicating debut novel
weds a
brilliant literary style to the gripping tale of one woman’s
desperate
escape.
Review:
The International Association of Crime-Writers 2008 winner of The
Hammett Prize for Crime-Writing by a U.S. or Canadian author, The Outlander
is Toronto writer Gil Adamson’s powerful debut novel of a
twenty-year
old widow’s incredible struggle to survive against
overwhelming odds -
the pursuit of twin vengeance-mad redheaded brothers-in-law, the
unforgiving wilderness of the 1900s northwest mountains and forests,
and the all-consuming ravages of the Frank slide, one of North
America’s worst ever natural disasters. From the opening line
of, “It
was night, and dogs came through the trees, unleashed and
howling,” to
the final words, “Find me,” on the last page of the
story, and with all
of the exactly right words in between, the novel grabs and holds from
first to last.
Maddened from her 34-year-old husband’s neglect,
the death of her infant son and the cabin fever of her homesteading
existence, 20-year-old Mary Boulton kills her unfaithful spouse with a
rifle shot to the leg, watching his blood and his life drain into the
dirt floor of their single room cabin before taking off on a
spectacular run for her life. Through her intuition and wits the young
woman, “Widowed by her own hand,” manages to elude
her pursuing
brothers-in-law as determined to catch her as she is to escape, as
Adamson shows in storyline cross cuts between the hunted and the
hunters. After an interlude with an eccentric dowager and her retinue,
Mary and the “dark shapes” of her memories and the
sack of items she
has stolen, press onward to anywhere away from the twins. For a while
she finds solace and even the warmth of real love with a mountain man,
William Moreland, known to the Forest Service Rangers as “the
Ridgerunner” for his ability to raid their cabins and evade
their
capture. Regrettably for the lovers, Moreland’s own demons
motivate him
to desert the widow, leaving her once more desolate and destitute and
with the twins and a tracker they’ve hired still in hot
pursuit. With
the help of a not-too-friendly Indian and his gracious white wife, Mary
gets to the ramshackle tent and mining town of Frank. Here, a kindly
Reverend Mr. Angus Lorne Bonnycastle - “Bonny” to
his friends and his
flock- becomes her guardian angel, and she encounters some of the
Lord’s strangest castoffs – McEchern the dwarf, for
one example, who
runs the town’s trading post and, for another, Giovanni the
Italian
talking, “colossal, hump-shouldered creature with a heavy
head” who
supplies the town’s booze from his hidden still. Between
building a
ramshackle church and converting the miners to his faith with a baptism
of fisticuffs, Bonny deals in stolen horses brought to town by the
eight Cregan brothers, the black sheep of the 15-brother Cregan clan.
And all the while Mary’s own dark avengers, the redheaded
brothers are
circling relentlessly closer. But before they can swoop, nature takes
its own revenge for the underground gouges of the local mines and hurls
down the top of the mountain to obliterate the town. While Mary escapes
the devastation that Adamson describes in meticulous detail, the
photograph of the widow that appears in newspapers nation-wide comes
back to haunt her and leads to her eventual capture. But her intuition
and ingenuity rise again, resulting in an incredible escape, a reunion
with William Moreland and her final note, “Find me.”
For readers
who want a cracking good story with unforgettable characters engaged in
tension-filled activities, and told with a superlative richness of
language and a lushness of imagery, Gil Adamson’s novel, The Outlander,
is it. Her widow, Mary Boulton, and “Bonny”, her
Reverend, are the ideal stuff and stuffings of legends.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of The Outlander.
Review Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read The Outlander? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
The
Outlander
Ecco Press (Hardcover), April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-06-149125-X (006149125X)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-149125-2 (9780061491252)
Omnimystery
keywords for The Outlander
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