In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.
On the day of her wedding-dance, Ada feels lucky. She loves her broad-shouldered, bashful husband and her job as an apprentice midwife.
But her luck will not last. It is every woman's duty to have a child, to replace those that were lost in the Great Flu. And after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are hanged as witches, Ada's survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.
She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang. Its leader, a charismatic preacher-turned-robber, known to all as The Kid, wants to create a safe haven for women outcast from society. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.
'North is a riveting storyteller . . . Reader, you are in for a real treat' JENNY ZHANG
'Fans of Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy finally get the Western they deserve' ALEXIS COE
'North's knockout latest chronicles the travails of a midwife's daughter who joins a group of female and nonbinary outlaws near the end of the 19th century . . . Impossible to put down' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
'Calling it The Handmaid's Tale crossed with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid goes some way to describe this novel's memorable world, but it is also wholly its own' KIRKUS
'A grand, unforgettable tale' ESMÉ WEIJUN WANG
In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw,
The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife, But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows,
She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid, Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women, But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed, And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all,
Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes, Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear,
This
absorbing feminist western plucks the greatest conceits of the genre - the tension between individual freedom and society, the romance of the Old West marred by its inherent violence - and turns them on their heads . . . Anna North skewers the machismo traditionally championed by outlaws, and gives us instead resilient women who dress, rob and kill as men, but have all the burdens and forbearance of rejected women . . . written with careful prose that lingers lovingly on the details of convalescence, and luxuriating in its surroundings: the jackrabbits that hide behind jagged rocks, the smell of sage in Powder country . . .
Outlawed shares concerns with The Handmaid's Tale and The Crucible, but is distinctly itself . . This is first a moving examination of how the marginalised find friendship in an indifferent world and only second, a western. John Wayne's characters had the luxury of self-imposed isolation; these outlaws must stick together or die
