by Laird Hunt
First published 2019
A Puritan woman disappears into the northern woods of colonial New England. She may have fled her family, been taken against her will, or simply lost her way. Alone among the trees, she encounters another woman who changes everything. Her journey leads her through forests where wolves walk like humans, past a deep well that echoes with the cries of men, and aboard a ship constructed from human bones. As she travels deeper into this strange world, she begins to question whether the darkness she runs from might have lived inside her all along. The woman must confront the possibility that her flight from home was not escape but awakening. Hunt crafts a tale where the line between victim and predator blurs, where colonial fears of witchcraft meet the reality of female rage, and where the wilderness becomes a mirror for the wildness within.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, mystery, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: ambiguous-protagonist, blurred-lines, wilderness-as-mirror
Setting: New England
Period: Colonial
218 pages · Paperback · Little, Brown Paperbacks
Content warnings: violence