The narrative picks up steam as the twins finally catch word of Mary’s whereabouts and Moreland has a change of heart and decides that Mary is just what he needs to anchor him more firmly to his natural existence. It turns out that a woman in a mine is considered something other than an omen of good fortune.

Disaster strikes when a) Mary visits a mine closely followed by b) a rockslide that buries most of the town. She also meets the requisite eccentrics, including McEchern, a dwarf who owns a small business but who makes most of his money through the sale of white lightning. Their relationship is one of surrogate father-daughter. She continues west and temporarily settles in the forlorn mining town of Frank, where she meets up with the Reverend Bonnycastle, a limited but sincere minister. After their relationship heats up considerably, he leaves, Mary being almost more civilization than a body can stand. Along the way Mary has several significant encounters, first with William Moreland, a self-sufficient frontiersman who readily admits he can’t put up with civilization. Pursuing her are her two beefy twin brothers-in-law, who want revenge if not justice for the killing of their younger brother. The novel traces her journey across an early-20th-century landscape. This murderous act doesn’t occur in frustration or in rage but is done calmly, almost dispassionately, owing to a cumulative series of outrages in their brief marriage. The perambulations of a young woman across an austere landscape, knowing what she’s running from but fuzzy about what she’s running toward.Īt the age of 19, Mary Boulton becomes a fugitive: The self-made widow killed her husband with his own rifle.

The outlander by gil adamson