Lone Women by Victor LaValle

 

They came on their own to Montana.  In Montana, a woman could get a homestead although in most places it was unthinkable for a woman to own land by herself.  If she could stick it out for three years and improve the land, it was hers.  Adelaide Henry is one such woman.  She left her dead parents behind and came out West with a hundred dollars and a large steamer trunk.  Once she gets there, she wonders how she ever thought she would be able to handle this.

But Adelaide has a secret in that big steamer trunk.  Something that lives.  Something that kills.  Something that will protect her from the villains she meets.  There is the woman she shared a cart with on the last leg of her journey and her four blind sons.  They seem harmless but are in reality conmen who travel the land stealing and killing.  There are men who come by sure that Adelaide would welcome male company and are determined to make her enjoy it.  There are the townsfolk who are easily led by a group of vigilantes.

But Adelaide finds friends as well.  Her closest neighbor, another lone woman with a young son.  The only other black woman in the territory who makes and sells liquor.  The Chinese woman who does the town's laundry while searching for the grave of her father so she can honor his bones in their country's traditions.  These strong women welcome Adelaide into their midst and together this group is as dangerous as any men could ever be.

Victor LaValle has exploded onto the writing scene.  He works the territory between horror and fairy tales and this novel does that successfully, giving the reader chills along with the history of the Montana territories and a view of the West they won't soon forget.  Adelaide is strong when she arrives but by the novel's end she learns that strength is doubled and tripled when matched with other women's strength.  She also learns that family is everything and that family is who you choose for it to be.  This book is recommended for fantasy and horror readers.