A review by juliebuckles
The Outlander by Gil Adamson

4.0

This is not a beach read. I struggled a bit in the beginning -- not rapidly turning pages, but not putting it down, either. The author chooses to withhold the protagonist's name referring to her only as "the widow" until midway through. Without a name, I couldn't connect to this character. In an interview I read at the end of the book, Gil Adamson calls this a literary western, I think the description fits. (Think Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men). But I gave the "The Outlander" four stars because the book and the characters she encounters got under my skin. From the red-headed twins to the dwarf retailer to the minister -- all of them rich, nuanced characters. And now that I'm done (one chapter at a time wins the race), I can't stop thinking about Mary Boulton and the history of which this book was based. It's sudden and violent and I want to know more but I'll let readers experience the surprise on their own.