One day, while she is out checking the snares, he packs up his camp and disappears, leaving only her possessions and a note that says, “Go West.” Mary meets an Indian named Henry, mainly because he has her escaped horse. He teaches her a little about wilderness survival, such as how to set a snare. He takes her back to his camp, and they eventually become friends and lovers. At first, she believes she is hallucinating.

William “Ridgerunner” Moreland, a hermit on the run from the Forest Service, finds her. She builds a small fire and roasts some of the meat. Animals, in general, do not like her, and the wolf is no exception. A single wolf guards the carcass, but when she approaches, the wolf runs away. Mary eventually finds the carcass of a deer the wolves killed. Her horse escapes one night, pursued by wolves. She has no idea where she is or where she is going, has no survival skills, and is on the edge of starvation. She wanders by herself for more than a week. The brothers catch up to her, and she escapes in the dead of night with a stolen horse and some items she can sell for money. She rarely speaks, feels no pain, and is plagued by hallucinations. She stumbles into a church service, alarming the parishioners, but a no-nonsense widow, the old bird lady, takes her home and sees that she has a bath, food, and clothing. She is penniless and owns nothing but the widow’s weeds on her back and a Bible she can barely read, likely because of dyslexia. As the novel opens, Mary is already on the run, pursued by massive red-haired twins. Between her memories and her current life, there are brief scenes of the brothers looking for her. When he comes home, she shoots him with a rifle and buries him in the mud. When their child dies and he tells her that she can just have another one, she goes mad. Their brief marriage is an unhappy one she fails to please him, and he alternately ignores her for long periods and berates her for being useless. He takes her out West to where he has acreage, gambles away most of the money, and takes mistresses on the side. She marries the first man who will have her, John. She had been a disagreeable child, beautiful but lacking the female graces her grandmother wanted her to display. Her father was a grieving widower, a lawyer, and a minister without faith. Throughout the novel, Mary remembers her childhood and her marriage. The central theme of the novel is wilderness: physical wilderness, social wilderness, and the wilderness of insanity. The story is about Mary Boulton, a young woman who murders her callous husband and goes on the run in the wilds of Canada, pursued by her ruthless brothers-in-law and tormented by her own unhappy memories and madness. Written by Canadian poet Gil Adamson, the novel won multiple awards, including the Hammett Prize, ReLit Award for Best Novel, and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. The Outlander (2007) is a western/historical crime novel.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson