This is a strange book - historical fiction with a bit of horror thrown in. Adelaide Henry is a black woman with a deep secret. The opening scene shows her burning her home with the dead bodies of her parents inside. She then leaves California with a very heavy trunk and heads to Montana where she can homestead. Along the way she meets a very strange family of four blind brothers and their very unfriendly mother, the Mudges.

The story leads Adelaide to a remote place in Montana where she meets her distant neighbor, Grace and her son Sam. Very gradually, the reader learns what could possibly be in the heavy trunk -- her sister, a monster twin.

There are parts of the story that are really outlandish - a wealthy couple who build an opera house in the nearby town, the violent attack on a young man by the monster. However, it is a page turner. The ending may be a bit pat, but it fits with the weird story. Overall, a good read - I would read more by this author. ( )

I went into this book expecting to regret my choices. Victor LaValle's Lone Women is marketed as horror and I'm normally a big ole wimp about that, but the book got really strong reviews and it's about a Black woman homesteader in Montana in 1915 who's dealing with the burden of a creeping supernatural burden. I was intrigued despite myself.

Yet what LaValle wrote isn't a horror novel. It's a fantasy book with a smidge more gore to it than your average episode of Buffy. I never once felt uneasy or creeped out or even all that unsettled as I read, and I wanted both the Big Reveal and many other aspects of the story to be, well, weirder. I will say LaValle does have a knack for conjuring up a vivid setting: an Old West opera house, the howl of the wind across the plains, the make-do interior of a settler's shack. This would probably make for a great movie or miniseries if filmed; the fodder for the visual part of an adaptation is all there.

It's also a quick page-turner of a read. But what is lacking in Lone Women a sense of cohesiveness to the story and any real character development. A tighter focus on Adelaide's POV might have been a smart idea here, letting LaValle show us more profoundly how her sense of herself and her relationship to her family's Big Secret changes over time. Equally, while I'm a sucker for a Found Family tale, here it felt as if LaValle just told us that one existed rather than showed it being created.

Not a bad book, but a little bit of a let-down. ( )

Western Horror full of twists and turns? Obviously this was amazing.

I LOVED The Changeling and The Ballad of Black Tom so I was pretty excited for an opportunity to read this early. It ended being my favorite LaValle so far!

Honestly this book is best entered blind so I'm not going to describe the plot much. I didn't even read a synopsis and I was thrilled with how much I was stunned by events.

We open with a scene of Adelaide Henry setting her home on fire with her dead parents inside and heading out to a claim in Montana with a mysterious and unnaturally heavy trunk. It's a slow burn to begin with but with just enough tantalizing horror hints and twists to keep you glued until things really ramp up.

Twisty and creepy, great atmosphere and well-written characters and setting. Highly recommend if you're already a LaValle fan or looking for a place to start.

Lone Women, Victor LaValle, author
In the early 1900’s, a lone black woman sets out from the California homestead of her parents, Eleanor and Glenville Henry, to homestead alone, to settle and work on land in Montana that the government would happily transfer to her, although she was a “Negro”, and a single woman, as long as she stayed for three years and improved it. The land had no creature comforts and the hardship she would face was something she could not imagine, but she left anyway, taking only a large and heavy steamer trunk. What was in the trunk? Did she pack items for survival? Was she prepared to live alone in the wilderness? Adelaide Henry was determined to leave, but not before destroying all evidence of her having lived in the farmhouse for 31 years. What would compel a woman living on a prosperous farm, producing Santa Rosa plums, to flee her home? What was she running from, or toward, and why?
Arriving in Big Sandy, Montana, after a long and arduous journey, via Seattle, still in possession of her heavy steamer trunk that was securely locked, she saw some of the townsfolk that had homesteaded there successfully. Mrs. Jerrine Reed was the head of the Busy Bees and the Suffragettes. She met every train. Fred Harndon, who worked for the Bear Paw Mountaineer writing the local news, was there too, looking for newsworthy copy. Still, no one paid much attention to her, so she felt relatively unbothered by her isolation and “difference”. As time passed, some residents came to her aid, or she would not have survived. She needed food and wood to heat her cabin. She had brought none.
On her trip to Montana, she met the Mudges, a mother and her four blind sons. They disappeared before the end of the journey, only to resurface later. She met Grace and her child, Sam. She met Bertie, the only other black woman, and Fiona, who lived with Bertie and was of Chinese background. She attended the Opera House of Mrs. Reed, the wealthiest family in town. These few people, plus a few others, will highlight all of life’s conflicts. They will be deftly introduced by the author, and all of the issues will be resolved one way or another, by LaValle, so that neither the horror or the happiness will seem unusual. He blends the commonplace with the bizarre, seamlessly.
The Mudges are evil. Bertie and Fiona’s relationship is suspect. Grace is a teacher, and a fearsome protector of her child. What happened to her husband? Her child is shunned. Why? Who is Elizabeth? There are many secrets revealed, exposing human frailties, human kindness and human cruelty. Vigilante justice exists. Do the townspeople have a moral compass or the appearance of superficial virtue? Who and what is the real monster? Man’s inhumanity to man was on full display in this remote hinterland, but so was the milk of human kindness.
By enlightening the reader on the history of women’s struggles, racial injustice, immigration issues and vigilante justice in the past, the author has also expertly introduced the same issues that still exist today. Those who march to the beat of another drummer or come from another place or look different than expected are often exposed to the foolishness of our rash judgment. Perhaps we need to step back and think a bi more, before we react and pass judgment. ( )

I kept turning the pages, as my interest was definitely peaked. Just can't put my finger on it, but I feel like it needed some more detail on Elizabeth, Adelaide's parents and her life growing up. While there was the supernatural element, there was no reason or explanation as to why or what may have caused or contributed to it. That's where I'm held back from giving more stars. Not a bad story though. ( )