Lone Women

“A woman is a mule. It’s how Eleanor explained the toil of life.”

This metaphor was often repeated by Adelaide’s mother, Eleanor, throughout the majority of Adelaide’s life, and it is also a frequent refrain throughout the novel. Though her mother never fully explained its meaning, Adelaide assumed that it was her way of describing life for women in general and for the women of Henry family in particular. That is, the quote implies that women like Eleanor and Adelaide are fated to work their lives away in service of others.

“Now here’s the funny part: Adelaide Henry came out here hoping to disappear. She didn’t want to be found, meant to be hiding, so if the man had asked her name, what would she have done? Lied, maybe, though she’d never been too good at that. Instead, she might’ve made the mistake of telling him her true name and hometown.”

In this passage, Adelaide reflects that upon her arrival in Big Sandy, Montana, the newspaper reporter did not bother to ask who she was or what brought her to Montana. Adelaide is amused by her own disappointment that no one is interested in her story, given that she is trying to keep the truth about her identity a secret. She acknowledges how open she might have inadvertently been about herself, demonstrating that despite her desire for anonymity, she longs for a deeper sense of connection with the surrounding community.

“Queer folk. That’s what they say about the Henrys.”

In this quote, the word “queer” is meant in its original definition of “strange” or “odd.” This phrase was used throughout much of Adelaide’s life to describe her family, for they were strange and secretive, keeping entirely to themselves. When Adelaide reflects on this phrase at the start of the novel, it causes feelings of resentment, for she knows that the ostracization of the Henry family was self-imposed. However, the phrase is repeated later in the novel, often to describe the other socially marginalized characters that Adelaide befriends. In this new context, the phrase becomes a point of shared pride and kinship.

“Adelaide walked along, nodding her head as if she, too, were confused. Of course, she was not. She could have answered the man’s question easily. After all, she’d packed the trunk herself. Adelaide had brought her burden with her. She knew exactly how heavy it was. Those horses never stood a chance.”

The wagon carrying Adelaide’s possession, most notably her steamer trunk, becomes stuck in a valley or “coulee,” and the horses are unable to pull it out, much to the consternation of the wagon driver, Mr. Olsen. Adelaide feigns surprise, but she recognizes that the contents of the steamer trunk, and therefore the weight of her burden, are too heavy for the horses to bear. In this passage, “burden” has a double-meaning, as it literally describes the monster that Adelaide has locked in her trunk, as well as her secret family history that she is trying her best to escape.

“This land is trying to kill every single one of us, let me tell you. And we keep each other alive. Your neighbors might not all welcome you, but I promise you they will help you if you need it. Because they will need you to help them eventually. For better or worse, that’s the best I can give you.”

Mr. Olsen the wagon driver shares these words with Adelaide before they finish the journey to her homestead. The quote describes the harsh, unforgiving nature of the Montana prairie, which Adelaide will soon experience firsthand. It also serves as foreshadowing for the people that Adelaide will meet and the friendships she will cultivate, many of which will start as relationships of convenience and mutual support.

“She took one deep breath sitting there on the trunk. And then Adelaide Henry rose.”

In this passage, Adelaide is sitting on her steamer trunk, the symbol of her family’s curse and burden, and wondering how she will survive in the desolate land of Montana. Instead of giving in to despair, she resolves that she will survive. Thus, in this moment she is literally standing up, while also figurative rising above her circumstances, placing distance between herself and the burden that brought her here.

“She hammered a nail into the wall by the oven and, for the first time since she’d left California, she took the length of twine from around her neck and hung the key for the trunk’s lock there. She felt a thousand pounds lighter.”

This passage further highlights the relationship between Adelaide’s family secret and the feeling of being weighed down. She describes how taking the key to her trunk from around her neck lifts a weight from her shoulders. The act also signifies that for the first time in her journey, she has created a space for herself in which she feels safe enough to let go and unburden herself from her familial trauma.

“Here’s an interesting moment in any friendship. That time when one person has revealed something essential about themselves and the other must decide if they can accept it.”

This quote describes Adelaide’s initial encounter with her neighbor and fellow “lone woman,” Grace Price. Grace barely knows Adelaide, but she has already made critical comments about Adelaide’s cabin. The more she converses with Grace, Adelaide realizes that this quality is actually a key component of Grace’s personality, one that must be tolerated if Adelaide hopes to befriend this woman. This moment also showcases that Adelaide’s initial appraisal of Grace is one of begrudging acceptance, while also foreshadowing the eventual depth of their friendship.

“Why else would a girl as strong as her be born into this family, if she wasn’t meant to yoke the thing they’d been punished with?”

Adelaide is described as a uniquely strong and powerful woman, and she has been this way since she was a child. Her physical qualities have always allowed her to subdue the creature, who is revealed to be her twin sister, Elizabeth. Her ability to contend with Elizabeth suggests that her own birth, and therefore the birth of her sister, were part of a greater fate or destiny, even if it is a cursed one.

“A sound—a snort—came from under the mattress. The creature was waking up. Which monsters were worse? The one in here or the family out there?”

Adelaide finds herself trapped in her cabin between the Mudges, a family of criminals who wish her dead, and her monstrous sister, who has escaped from the steamer trunk and is hiding behind Adelaide’s bed. In considering which of the two she should fear more, Adelaide demonstrates that “monstrosity” is not limited to beasts and demons. By the same token, “monsters” may also contain a degree of humanity.

“History is simple, but the past is complicated. I, for one, embrace the complications.”

These words are spoken by one of the main antagonists of the novel, Mrs. Jerrine Reed, who is also a powerful figure in the town of Big Sandy. She is addressing the role of women in important historical events and how their place in history is often written over or forgotten. She is highlighting that the actual events that transpire are often full of more “complicated” characters, whereas history is a carefully constructed narrative. At the same time, her statement that she “embraces” the past’s complicated nature is a direct contradiction of her hostile attitudes and behavior later in the novel, when she seeks to erase women like Bertie, Grace, and Fiona from the historical record of Big Sandy.

“And Adelaide watched Grace Price feeling shame enough about her wounded hand to hide it, imperfectly, but doing a seemingly perfect job of hiding the fact she’d murdered her husband.”

Grace is shot in the hand by the Mudges when they attempt to rob her, and Adelaide observes that although the hand is technically healed, it has a noticeable disfiguration that Grace tries to hide by wearing gloves. In actuality, by attempting to hide it, Grace makes the physical remnant of her trauma more obvious. By contrast, Adelaide has learned from Sam that Grace killed her husband, and Adelaide is impressed that she is able to hide this burden or curse with much greater ease.

“Think of hunger instead. The more time spent out of the cage, the stronger the hunger.”

This quote is from the perspective of the creature, Adelaide’s sister Elizabeth, after she has escaped from her trunk and flown off into the Montana wilderness. Now that she is free, she has time to think about her life and her circumstances. Doing so produces feelings of anguish, so she tries to avoid these thoughts. Instead, she reflects that with her newfound freedom comes a great, literal hunger. The desires associated with her freedom mirror those of Adelaide, who also hungers, but for human connection, rather than flesh.

“Mr. Reed leaned close to Joab now and squeezed his arm. ‘Make no mistake, you’re not alone anymore. You survived a horror, lost the woman who raised you, but you’re with us, and, Joab, we are with you. You’re a Strangler now.’”

Joab has just participated in the lynching of the horse thieves or “wolfers” among whom his family once hid. Mr. Reed, another central antagonist, welcomes Joab into his inner circle, providing Joab with the acceptance and security that he has been longing for. However, joining the community of “Stranglers” contradicts his desire to be honest and “legitimate” and to move away from his criminal past.

“Towns died out here, as sure as any living thing. Husks left to rot and return to the earth.”

This quote describes the way that the Montana wilderness kills not just the inhabitants, but physical towns in their entirety, recalling Mr. Olsen’s previous assertion that the land itself is lethal. By personifying ghost towns as formerly living things that were literally left to “rot” and die, the narrative evokes the notion of ghosts or hauntings, both of which are prevalent throughout the novel.

“But I never saw one picture of the Chinese men who worked in these camps. You could almost believe they’d never been here. Easier to forget they were a part of all this, if you never have to look at them. Or maybe they just didn’t think men like my father were worth the expense of a photograph.”

Fiona explains to Adelaide that her father worked in mining camps throughout Montana and the northwestern United States, but she cannot find any record of him, not even his grave. This section of the novel highlights the extreme marginalization that people of Chinese heritage often experienced during this period of American history, for Fiona remarks that this lack of records is true for nearly all the Chinese immigrants, although they often took on essential jobs. Her frustration at their erasure from official history evokes Mrs. Reed’s sentiment that the past “is complicated.” If the extensive contributions of Chinese people were faithfully recorded, it would destabilize the dominant narrative of white male success in the American West.

“Who better understood the role of the dutiful child than Fiona? Who could sympathize more with the one who had gone on and done what was expected of them?”

Adelaide has just related her entire story and family history to her companions, Bertie, Fiona, and Grace. She observes that of the three of them, Fiona seems to sympathize with her circumstances the most, which Adelaide attribute to the fact that Fiona is also a long-suffering, faithful daughter, even to a father she cannot remember. This realization for Adelaide also provides a significant point of connection between her and Fiona, and in this way, the author highlights some of the similarities between the experiences of African American people and Chinese American people during this time frame.

“But she’d done it. And the stars hadn’t fallen. Now she felt a deeper shock, a different revelation. Maybe she’d never had to keep the secret at all.”

Adelaide has come to the realization that sharing her story and her burden with the other women is not as earth-shattering as she feared it would be. She is shaken by this discovery, as it forces her to question the wisdom of the way she and her family lived their entire lives: in isolation and secrecy. Instead, they could have sought the connection and support of a wider community.

“The opera house, the Busy Bees, all of it grew in that spoiled soil. Good things that they tended to with sincere care. And if they blamed themselves or considered themselves cursed in some way, they never spoke of it. They never spoke of it. They never spoke of it.”

Mr. and Mrs. Reed reflect on their own family curse: the birth of their monstrous child and the child’s subsequent death at Mr. Reed’s hands. The growth of their town emerged as a direct result of their actions, for rather than owning up to their guilt in murdering their child, they put their energy into cultivating Big Sandy as they would a child. However, they acknowledge that their town is built on an insidious foundation, and although they emphasize that they never talk about their secret, the repetition at the end of the quote suggests that they do not need to talk about it, as there are reminders in the town all around them.

“I needed someone on my side. And it sounds to me like your sister could’ve used the same thing.”

In this quote, Bertie Brown expresses sympathy for Adelaide’s sister, Elizabeth, whom she views not as a monstrosity, but rather as an overlooked and discarded child who would have benefitted from an ally. Bertie, who has not yet seen Elizabeth in person, is still in disbelief that Elizabeth could be a literal monster and assumes that some other condition has led to her mistreatment. She also narrates her own childhood experience as a neglected child possessed by an enslaver who refused to let her go. This story provides a point of comparison for Elizabeth’s life, for Bertie sees them both as victims of a harmful and racist system.

“She showed them the face revealed to those who would deny a mother her child, and when they saw it, they were terrified by her fury, but because they loved her they did not let go.”

Grace, having escaped from her near execution at the hands of Mrs. Reed and the Busy Bees, has entered Mrs. Reed’s house in a fury in order to find Sam. Bertie and Fiona subdue her, in an effort to calm her down first. She nearly turns on them, which demonstrates the extreme lengths to which she will go to protect her son. At the same time, Bertie and Fiona overcome their own fear of Grace in order to protect her and offer her their unconditional support.

“It looked as if someone had released rage from a bottle and let it loose on the town. ‘My whole life,’ Mrs. Brown said, down in the orchestra. ‘My whole life I’ve felt like doing this. But it wasn’t allowed.’”

This quote relies on figurative language to describe the complete destruction of the interior of the Big Sandy opera house, comparing it to the feeling of rage personified. Bertie admits that she has always wanted to unleash her own bitter feelings to this extent, but that she was not permitted to do so, demonstrating that expressions of anger of this magnitude are permitted only for certain privileged individuals, and not for Black women.

“At those times he wished he could’ve written to Sam to explain how vivid, how enormous, the world turned out to be. He wished he could’ve told Sam thank you.”

In this passage, Joab is reflecting on his experiences as a soldier abroad, realizing that his new life was possible in great part due to Sam’s understanding and generosity. When they first met, Sam showed Joab “the world” as framed in Sam’s newspaper clippings, which Joab comes to understand was the impetus for him to escape and to travel. He therefore owes his second chance not only to Adelaide’s mercy, but also to Sam’s openness.