Gil Adamson

In 1903 a desperate young woman flees alone across the west, one quick step ahead of the law. She has just become a widow by her own hand.

Gil Adamson's extraordinary novel opens in heart-pounding mid-flight and propels the reader through a gripping road trip with a twist -- the steely outlaw in this story is a grief-struck nineteen-year-old woman. As the young widow encounters characters of all stripes -- unsavoury, wheedling, greedy, lascivious, self-reliant, and occasionally generous and trustworthy -- Adamson weds her brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving, picaresque tale of one woman's deliberate journey into the wild.

When Gil Adamson published her first two books, a volume of poetry (Primitive; 1991) and a collection of stories (Help Me, Jacques Cousteau; 1995), readers immediately recognized a unique and unusually compelling voice, one that partnered the random and the surreal with a finely tuned technical brilliance. The Outlander more than fulfills the promise of that voice.

[From House of Anansi's description of The Outlander]




This year, House of Anansi sold foreign rights to The Outlander to:

Ecco Press/HarperCollins (US)
Bloomsbury (UK)
Christian Bourgois (France)
Unwin & Allen (Australia)
C. Bertelsmann (Germany)
De Bezige Bij (Holland)
Editions Boreal (Quebec)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The Outlander
Gil Adamson, Ecco, $25.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-149125-2

Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton (“[w]idowed by her own hand”) and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton’s sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton’s journey and ultimate liberation—made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind—speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. Lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack. Already established as a writer of poetry (Ashland) and short stories (Help Me, Jacques Cousteau), Adamson also shines as novelist. (Apr.)

(FYI, it's Alberta, not Idaho and Montana. Very similar parts of the world, though.)