Outlawed : a novel

Title:

Outlawed : a novel

Author:

North, Anna, author.

ISBN:

9781635575422

Physical Description:

261 pages ; 25 cm.

Subject Term:

Outlaws -- Fiction.

Outcasts -- Fiction.

Midwives -- Fiction.

Infertility -- Fiction.

Pregnancy -- Social aspects -- Fiction.

Influenza -- Fiction.

Epidemics -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

West (U.S.) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Western stories.

Adventure fiction.

Summary:

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. --

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	FICTION NOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	FICTION NOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION NOR	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION NOR	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK
AMAZON BEST OF THE YEAR

"A masterpiece." - R.O. Kwon

The Crucible meets True Grit in this riveting adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West.

In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.

She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.

Author Notes

Anna North is a journalist, Editor and author. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She works for The New York Times and is a staff editor. Her writing has also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, Nautilus, Salon and on Jezebel and BuzzFeed.

She is the author of America Pacifica. Her recent book, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark, won the 2016 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Fiction.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

North's knockout latest (after The Life and Death of Sophie Stark) chronicles the travails of a midwife's daughter who joins a group of female and nonbinary outlaws near the end of the 19th century. Eighteen-year-old newlywed Ada, unable to conceive a child, fears she will be accused of witchcraft, a fate common to the women in her Dakota territory community. After Ada's former friend has a miscarriage and accuses Ada of casting a spell on her, Ada's mother helps her flee to a nunnery, where a Sister suggests she join a nearby gang known as Hole in the Wall. Ada becomes a "doctor" to the motley group led by the Kid (to whom no gender pronouns are attributed--"'Not he, not she,' Elzy said. 'The Kid is just The Kid'"). The outlaws plan to create a town where nonconforming people can belong. The tense plot takes many turns through Ada's increasingly violent adventures with the gang, beginning with a botched holdup of a wagon laden with gold. As the novel barrels toward a surprise ending, it's further strengthened by Ada's voice and reflections, which preserve a sense of immediacy: "distances that had once seemed vast were now so small that my enemies could cross them in an instant." The characters' struggles for gender nonconformity and LGBTQ rights are tenderly and beautifully conveyed. This feminist western parable is impossible to put down. Agent: Julie Barer, the Book Group. (Jan.)

Kirkus Review

A young woman in an alternate version of the 1890s American West joins a gang of outlaws. Ada is just a teenager living in the Independent Town of Fairchild when she's married off and expected to start a family with her new husband. The daughter of the town's midwife, Ada knows just about all there is to know about childbirth and childbearing--except the reasons behind the failure to conceive, the worst fate that can befall a woman in her society. (The standard punishment for a "barren" woman is to be hanged as a witch.) When she herself cannot get pregnant, Ada must leave her mother and young sisters behind, first fleeing to a convent. Then, when she becomes dissatisfied by the limitations to her learning that convent life dictates, she is directed by the Mother Superior to the Hole in the Wall Gang. Well known as robbers in "the territories," the gang is led by the mysterious Kid, a figure said to be as "tall as a pine tree and as strong as a grizzly bear." But when Ada is secreted to their hideout, she finds none of the outlaws, least of all the Kid, are what they seem. North has smashed two unlikely genres together here: the dystopian alternate history and the Western. Calling it The Handmaid's Tale crossed with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid goes some way to describe the novel's memorable world, but it is also wholly its own. It earns its place in the growing canon of fiction that subverts the Western genre by giving voice to the true complexity of gender and sexual expression, as well as race relations, that has previously been pushed to the margins of traditional cowboy or westward expansion tales. A genre- (and gender-) bending take on the classic Western. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

North's feminist Western novel features Ada, a young woman who has a good life going for her. She's the apprentice to her mother, a midwife, and married to a man she loves. But after a year of marriage, she still isn't pregnant, and Ada lives in a time and environment where barren women are fiercely distrusted. She ends up bringing her skills as a doctor to the Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outcast queer or barren women and gender-non-conforming folk. This is a lovely slow draw in the world of the Old West, a story about the people who don't belong, portraying a realistic, close-minded world that only accepts women willing to fit into a specific mold and that stigmatizes any woman who cannot give birth. It's exciting to read a Western tale that features such a range of women and queer characters, and Ada herself is a bold protagonist whose desire to learn more about the female reproductive system and how it actually functions runs fiercely in her veins. North's new book is perfect for fans of Sarah Gailey's Upright Women Wanted (2020).

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

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