Lone Women by Victor LaValle

I’m a fan of Victor LaValle's work. So much so I’d request his new Netgalley ARC without doing research into it, on name recognition alone. And sure enough, he doesn’t disappoint. In fact, this might be his best one yet. Not perfect (more on that later), but really, really good.
Do I love Westerns? No, not particularly. I’m not even sure this one qualifies, although it is a novel of American West with the place as prominently featured as any character and deadlier than some.
Into this windblown and isolated Montana setting, a woman arrives. She plans to homestead, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the government, and to that end she acquires a small remote property. All she has with her is a large heavy trunk.
A trunk that we as the readers watch her leave her parents’ farm with in the stunning first scene. The farm behind her on fire, the bodies of her parents left behind to burn. It’s positively cinematic.
But Adelaide is a woman with secrets. All will be revealed in good time, just you wait.
In Montana, she finds a patchy community of self-determined resolute wind-beaten womenfolk she proceeds to associate with, however reservedly.
But then the trunk is opened and her secret leaps into the world. Danger sighs flash as Adelaide panics. All the while the world around her with the local politics and local powers that be have their own ideas about the land and the people of it…and that’s a different but all too real sort of danger too.
Negotiating her traumatic past and her complicated present, Adelaide proceeds. With a marvelously variegated cast of friends she acquires. And as a reader you can’t help but cheer for them
That’s how emotionally engaging this book is; how well written it is, how exciting it is.
It really is such a great book; one of the few I read and had it play as vividly as a movie in my mind.
But remember that thing about it not being perfect…well (and this might be purely personal), I don’t care for speculative fiction that overpowers itself with messages. Or more like MESSAGES.
While I appreciate diversity (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) in my reading, LaValle seems to really lay it on heavily here. Yes, the book is very Girl-Powered, with a strong feminist message. Yey. Yes, the book features characters of different races and ethnicities and queerness and all that. Yey.
But does it have to be handed quite so heavily?
I mean, almost literally the book is divided so that all the good and moral characters are people of color and LGBTQ+ umbrella and all the evil ones are white sisgendered individuals.
At least the gender thing isn’t as divisive: there’s a nice pair of female villains to  counter all those virtuous ones.
But really? LaValle is too good of an author for such unsubtleness.
Then, there’s the ending – so feel-good and quaint for a story that dark, it’s almost jarring. But then again…by then you care about the characters so much, you kind of want that sort of resolution, no matter how twee or over-sentimental.
In the end and overall, this book was a pleasure to read. And a thrill too. The best of both worlds. Wildly entertaining tale of secrets, redemption, forgiveness. Just call it the Sisterhood of the Traveling Trunks or something. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.