What I really liked about Adamson's The Outlander was . . . well . . . everything. What a great read! Suspenseful action, beautiful language, brilliant characterization (quirky, authentic-feeling characters) and the emotions illicited! Wonderful experience. Everything from pity to horror to joy.

Mary Boulton, having recently rendered herself a widow, has bolted in a mad flight away from the scene. She hears voices, sees things that aren't there, and is possessed by the past. And she's immediately sympathetic. Her wild combination of courage in the face of confusion and desperation somehow illicits both pity and a strange kind of admiration. She's resilient, intelligent, and my emotions where fully engaged as I followed her journey away from the disappointment of civilization, and as she encountered all sorts of misfits. Really, this is a novel that features outsiders, people who don't fit in (and who does, really? Those of us who appear to fit in are usually doing so at some cost). Among the odd dramatis personae: an elderly, 'bird-like" woman who befriends her, a thieving hermit called The Ridgerunner, a boxer of a reverend name Bonnycastle and a dwarf who owns and runs a store. (I have to say that I really enjoyed the almost archetypal epithets for some of these characters . . . Th Widow, The Ridgerunner, The Reverend).

Set in the north in the early 1900s, a time when it was a place of ruffians and fortune-hunters, miners and those scraping by, horse thieves and preachers -- and running women who have no home to return to -- this is a world I don't often find myself getting lost in, but I was completely immersed in this one.

And the way the interior of Mary's mind is revealed bit by bit, the story of what happened between her and her husband unravelling. The relationship between her father and her grandmother, the dissolution of that elusive illusion normality. The pacing is perfection. I can't say enough good things about this novel. The wilderness, the ever-present fear of annihilation Mary experiences (either from nature or by the hands of the eery twin brothers who chase her across the mountains) inhabit the imagination in a way that definitely haunts. But not in a bad way. Absolutely loved this book! It'll stick with me for a good long while, I suspect.