Book Review: Lone Woman by Victor LaValle

 

 Lone Woman by Victor LaValle

Hardcover, 285 pages

March 2023,  Published by One World

My first experience with the work of Victor LaValle was the amazing deconstruction of HP Lovecraft and his racism in the novella The Ballad of Black Tom. It was a simple but powerful take on cosmic horror and racism. The Changeling is the only other book of his that I have read. I was struck by how much that book defied my expectations. I realized quickly, that LaValle was a gifted storyteller that you could follow no matter the genre or concept. He is a gifted storyteller.

So I put this on hold at the library only knowing the name of the author. Seeing that this was a period and a Western I admit I wasn’t sure. I had been on a really good roll with modern Science Fiction lately but I trusted LaValle even if I wasn’t in the mood for a story in this genre.

I was rewarded for this trust as Lone Woman is a fantastic novel, a character-driven horror novel that works on all levels. The characters are perhaps the strongest element. While we meet many interesting people on the frontier it is the travels of Adelaide Henry, a single black woman homesteading in the old west whose eyes we see this world through.

It is 1915, She had to leave her rural California home in a hurry. Bringing with her a huge steamer trunk that she keeps locked. She travels to claim a home in the countryside in Montana. The state desperate for population offers land in the countryside to anyone who can tame it. Adelaide thinks it is perfect, she and her trunk are away from everyone.

This is a horror novel so as you imagine there is something awful that she is hiding in that cabinet. LaValle does a wonderful job carefully seeding that part of the story. For the first hundred pages I felt a Toni Morrison or Alice Walker vibe. While those two women are not marketed as horror they were really good at historical period novels that highlight the horror that women in the past dealt with just living in those times.

The first act really highlights Adelaide’s isolation in the countryside. I thought the novel would be focused on the lengths she would go to survive and “tame” the land. After a short time and some hardship, she meets neighbors who live across the valley, a mother and son. A friendship forms and they even do things like go to won together and eventually to a dance.

Lone Woman takes place in the twentieth century, but set on the frontier it may as well have been set during the civil war. The nuts and bolts of world-building and survival on the frontier is so strongly written that I forgot about the trunk until a moron opened it. Adelaide let her guard down and met a man named Matthew at a dance, he opened the case and paid dearly for this mistake. He was curious but should have left it alone.

“A funny thing happens when a man thinks he has a woman's company all to himself.
He may show a face to her that he would keep hidden if there were even one more person around. He speaks from his secret self.”

I was nervous Matthew would hurt her, but he opened the trunk and thus, he was attacked by a monster. When he awakes he is in shock, was it an animal? Adelaide’s secret is a monster that her family has hidden in the trunk, now we know why she had to run from California.

“This woman. Will we see her recorded as a brave soldier in their war? Or will she risk being forgotten? We can do our part. We can remember her. History is simple, but the past is complicated. I, for one, embrace the complications.”

She is not the monster, but it wouldn’t die, she couldn’t kill it. It is at this point more than 1/3 of the way through the book that the true nature as a supernatural horror hybrid with Western is revealed. Horror westerns have become a thing recently in the small press, but this one took me by surprise. It shouldn’t have. I have read this author's excellent work before.

Character-wise the monster is a metaphor for guilt and shame that Adelaide is living with.

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.”

That is one of the things that elevates the novel, but in the end, it is simply an effective horror novel. Plain and simple. One of the most powerful moments for me happened when Adelaide return with her horse Obadiah. She cared for the horse and thought about the horse’s feelings something you rarely see in Western novels. That is why she discovers the trunk open we fear the horse.

“One of the doorway beams had yanked out so far it formed a sharp close to a Y, and without any better option, she tied Obadiah off right there. She gave the horse a calming touch then she moved on. As soon as she took two steps, Obadiah stepped forward, too trying to keep close to her. She put up her hand and urged him back but returned to his side and offered a calming touch to his neck. When she walked away the second time, the old horse didn’t try to follow.”

There are moments like these when LaValle is dialing up the suspense, he does this by manipulating the setting, our expectations about characters, and the feelings we develop for them.

There is also witty dialogue like this exchange in chapter 61.

“You’re wearing a pistol,” Sam said
“Yes, I am.”
“You weren’t before.”
“That’s true, Joab agreed “Mrs. Reed gave it to me.”
“Is it for me?” Sam asked unable to look up from the floor.
“It’s for whoever needs it,” Joab told him.

I expected a grim frontier tale, and there are moments that feel that way. The novel never felt like a chore or a slog to me. LaValle knows how to pace the tale, and I was surprised when I quoted the dialogue above. I had no idea there were sixty chapters…because the book flowed and was a page-turner throughout. Great stuff.