From the very start of Lone Women by Victor LaValle, it is made quite clear that whatever is locked inside Adelaide Henry’s steamer trunk is both alive and very dangerous. It tore her parents to pieces, after all. An act that forces Adelaide to burn the family home, with the remains of her parents inside, and flee with whatever she can carry and whatever is locked inside that steamer trunk.
Being a lifelong addict of any and every thing to do with monsters. I was predisposed to wondering and guessing that when the locked steamer trunk would be opened, either by accident or on purpose, what style of entity would be revealed.
While it could be something akin to Fluffy, the insatiable carnivorous beast that was locked inside The Crate in the first Creepshow movie, and in the source material story of the same name. I had serious doubts that that would be the case. No, my biggest suspicion as to what was inside that steamer trunk was that it was not all that different something akin to Belial, the deformed twin brother of Duane Bradly in Frank Henenlotter’s cult classic Basket Case.
Adelaide’s journey to Montana is not all that easy, but it is also not all that dangerous, either. She is going east from a homestead in California, after all. But while the frontier has been settled, it is also far from being toiled and tamed.
The real dangers and life-threatening challenges Adelaide must face and do battle with as she attempts to settle and build an all new life, in a region where no one knows her, begin manifesting when she arrives in the Montana town of Big Sandy, the city closest to her claim.
This is another homestead claim, which means that Adelaide needs to live there for three years, during which she is required to make it habitable and cultivate crops. If she succeeds in doing so, she gets to keep the land. If she fails or gives up, the land reverts back to the government. Failure is not an option for her. Neither is discovery, or so she thinks when she first arrives in Big Sandy.
While this is Adelaide’s first experience living in an area with few people of color, there was a refreshing absence of overt (i.e. dramatically performative) racism in the narrative. Oh, there is racism. But it is more a humming undercurrent of white noise (pun kind of intended) than anything of the kind that would found if this tale were set in the Jim Crow south.
As long as Adelaide is 'good' (in that she meets with the community standards in an area starved for people to populate it) she will be accepted. But if those arbitrary community standards are altered, or challenged, in any way… Adelaide may no longer be considered one of the ‘good' ones. While this is never explicitly stated outright by any character, it is something that Adelaide knows and is aware of.
There is a lot more to the story than Adelaide and the contents of her steamer trunk. There is also a traveling family or ruthless, murderous criminals that Adelaide gets on the bad side of. A ghost town that may or may not have actual ghosts residing within it. Then there is Mrs. Reed, Big Sandy's wealthy matron, who is supportive of the suffrage movement and the bringing of industry for women to work to the town. But she is also the author and the enforcer of the community standards. She and her husband, Mr. Reed, are where that humming undercurrent of menace vibrates loudest. Make them happy and, well, everybody is happy. As long as the community standards are met and abided by.
Lone Women is my kind of book. It is exciting, it is touching, it is suspenseful, and, best of all, it continually surprised and subverted my expectations. I give it a hearty recommendation to any all Weird Western fans.
Until next time, happy trails…
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