Outlander, The (Adamson)

The Outlander 
Gil Adamson, 2007
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061491344

In Brief 
In 1903 Mary Boulton flees alone across the West, one heart-pounding step ahead of the law. At nineteen, she has just become a widow—and her husband's killer. As bloodhounds track her frantic race toward the mountains, she is tormented by mad visions and by the knowledge that her two ruthless brothers-in-law are in pursuit, determined to avenge their younger brother's death. Responding to little more than the primitive instinct for survival at any cost, she retreats ever deeper into the wilderness—and into the wilds of her own mind.

With the stunning prose and captivating mood of great works like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or early Cormac McCarthy, Gil Adamson's extraordinary debut novel weds a brilliant literary style to the gripping, moving, picaresque tale of one woman's desperate journey. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—1961
• Awards—Drummer General's Award; Books in Canada First
   Novel; Hammett Award; ReLit Award; 2009 Canada Reads
• Currently—Toronto, Canada

Gil Adamson (born Gillian Adamson, 1961) is a Canadian writer. She won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 2008 for her 2007 novel The Outlander.

Adamson's first published work was Primitive, a volume of poetry, in 1991. She followed up with the short story collection Help Me, Jacques Cousteau in 1995 and a second volume of poetry, Ashland, in 2003, as well as multiple chapbooks and a commissioned fan biography of Gillian Anderson, Mulder, It’s Me, which she coauthored with her sister-in-law Dawn Connolly in 1998.

The Outlander, a novel set in the Canadian West at the turn of the 20th century, was published by House of Anansi in the spring of 2007 and won the Hammett Prize that year. The novel was later selected for the 2009 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by actor Nicholas Campbell.

Adamson currently lives in Toronto with poet Kevin Connolly. (From Wikipedia.)

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Critics Say . . . 
An absorbing adventure from a Canadian poet and short story writer who knows how to keep us enthralled. Of course, the Girl Being Chased is one of the most enduring figures of chivalric and chauvinistic literature, a staple of television dramas and horror films.... But Gil is short for Gillian, and her strange and complicated heroine has nothing in common with Hollywood's worn-out damsels in distress…there are pages here you can't read slowly enough to catch every word. Adamson is as captivating with descriptions of vast mountain ranges as she is with the smaller calamities, like the drowning of a yearling "frightened into madness.
Ron Charles - Washington Post

A hallucinatory road novel—or, more accurately, trail novel—written in a chanting prose that's rich with wilderness description, physical adventure and barbed humor.... Here's a novel that offers both an intense journey (Mary's) and a portrait of a specific time and place: the Canadian frontier.
Seattle Times

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.
Publishers Weekly

Canadian poet and short fiction writer Adamson (Ashland), a 2007 Hammett Prize nominee, has shaped a picaresque tale in the style of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. Set in 1903, it reveals Mary Boulton's life with her cruel husband, John, in jagged flashbacks reflecting her sporadic delirium from hunger and the harsh elements. After their sickly newborn son dies, Mary takes the only way out she knows: she kills John with his hunting rifle and escapes West, with John's two angry brothers in pursuit. Various eccentrics help her along her harrowing journey, including William Moreland, a rough mountain man who eventually leaves her to return to the wilderness. Mary barely survives until a Crow Indian finds and takes her to a nearby mining town, where she recuperates. The brothers eventually track her down there, arriving just after a calamitous landslide. Authentic historical details, a strong female character running for her life, and a murder-driven plot will appeal to fiction readers in all public libraries. Highly recommended.
Library Journal

The slow unfolding of story and character coupled with lyrical descriptions of the terrain, an occasional touch of bizarre humor, and a multitude of well-chosen historical details will appeal to readers of literary writing as well as historical-fiction fans. —Ellen Loughran
Booklist

The perambulations of a young woman across an austere landscape, knowing what she's running from but fuzzy about what she's running toward. At the age of 19, Mary Boulton becomes a fugitive: The self-made widow killed her husband with his own rifle. This murderous act doesn't occur in frustration or in rage but is done calmly, almost dispassionately, owing to a cumulative series of outrages in their brief marriage. The novel traces her journey across an early-20th-century landscape. Pursuing her are her two beefy twin brothers-in-law, who want revenge if not justice for the killing of their younger brother. Along the way Mary has several significant encounters, first with William Moreland, a self-sufficient frontiersman who readily admits he can't put up with civilization. After their relationship heats up considerably, he leaves, Mary being almost more civilization than a body can stand. She continues west and temporarily settles in the forlorn mining town of Frank, where she meets up with the Reverend Bonnycastle, a limited but sincere minister. Their relationship is one of surrogate father-daughter. She also meets the requisite eccentrics, including McEchern, a dwarf who owns a small business but who makes most of his money through the sale of white lightning. Disaster strikes when a) Mary visits a mine closely followed by b) a rockslide that buries most of the town. It turns out that a woman in a mine is considered something other than an omen of good fortune. The narrative picks up steam as the twins finally catch word of Mary's whereabouts and Moreland has a change of heart and decides that Mary is just what he needs to anchor him more firmly to his natural existence. At times the book reads almost like an allegory, for Adamson refers to her characters by abstractions like "the widow," "the Reverend" and "the Ridgerunner." A lovingly crafted novel.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

1. When we meet the widow, she is emotionally remote, frightened, and unable to form a plan. She has a strong will to survive, but few skills. By the end of the book she seems like a different woman. Is she a different person, or the same person with new skills? Never mind fictional characters, is it possible for people to change?

2. What is the cause of the widow's madness? Is this a manifestation of severe post-partum depression, or has Mary always been a little off? Will she always be, or is there some hope?

3. Regarding religion, the author says of Mary that "she had a child's disinterest in any father other than her own." Does Mary truly understand faith? Does she herself have any faith? Has she has been given any real instruction in faith? Does one need instruction? Of all the characters in this novel, who has the greatest sense of faith, or of the divine?

4. What motivates the bird lady to take in "strays and lame ducks"? She is described as a Good Samaritan—do you think she is one? Why are Zenta and Jeffrey so protective of her? Also, she tells the widow that the maid Zenta "dislikes you more than any other person I've brought to the house." Is there something about Mary that is different than the other "lame ducks"?

5. The names in this novel are out of a fairy tale: the widow, the Ridgerunner, the Reverend, the giant, the dwarf. Why did the author decide to choose such archetypal monikers for her characters? Do the characters come across as archetypes, or as fleshed-out personalities?

6. While sewing an injured miner's wound closed, Mary thinks "This is what the embroidery lessons were for." Did you learn anything new about women's (and men's) lives at the turn of the last century? Is historical detail important to you, or do you pay most attention to the story and character?

7. At one point, the widow realizes she has found "a kind of amnesty" with the Reverend. Is amnesty different from forgiveness? Do you think Mary wants forgiveness, or that she forgives herself?

8. The natural world itself is almost a character in The Outlander. Different characters have different relationships with it. For instance, in the "fine black boots," the twins seem out of place in the mountains, while William Moreland has been content to live alone in the wilderness for over a decade. What was your feeling about this element of the novel? In real life, have most of us lost a sense of the natural world?

9. After the avalanche, the widow lies in McEchern's store "as if dead" and thinks "he is gone, he is gone." It seems clear she is thinking of Bonny—but perhaps her lament for "him" is wider than that. What have men meant to her over the span of this novel?

10. After the landslide, Mary registers a change in herself. She is "like a different woman, one direly accustomed to loss. With nothing to her name, she had simply let go, let go of everything." What has she been holding onto? What does letting go accomplish?

11. "Find me." Why does Mary leave at the end? Does she want to live alone, as Moreland has—or is it a lover's game? Will the Ridgerunner have much trouble finding her? Where will she/they go now? Deeper into the wild, or toward civilization?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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