The Lost Wife: A novel

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Drawn partly from a true story, a searing, totally immersive novel about a devastating Native American revolt, and a woman caught in the middle of the conflict. In the summer of 1855, Sarah Brinton abandons her husband and child to make the long and difficult journey to Minnesota, where she will meet a childhood friend. Arriving at a small frontier post on the edge of the prairie, she discovers that her friend has died of cholera. Without work or money or friends, she quickly finds a husband who will become the resident physician at an Indian agency on the Yellow Medicine River. As one of the earliest settlers in the area, Sarah anticipates unease and hardship, but instead finds acceptance and kinship with the Sioux women who live on the nearby reservation. She learns to speak their language, nourishing a companionship with them which far exceeds that which she shares with her strange and distant husband. An endless flow of White settlers are clearing the forests and claiming land. The government has yet to pay the Sioux the annuities awarded them each July for the sale of the land, and starvation and disease begin to decimate the Sioux community. What inevitably and tragically follows is the Sioux Uprising of 1862. While seeking safety at a nearby fort, Sarah and her two young children are abducted by Sioux warriors. They are unexpectedly kept safe by one of the men, who protects them until their rescue six weeks later by federal troops. Because of her sympathy for the Sioux, Sarah has become an outcast, falsely accused of marriage with her Native American captor. Vilified by the whites and despised by her husband, she is lost to both worlds. Intimate, raw, compelling, and brilliantly subversive, Susanna Moore explores the history of Native American suffering and the rapacious settlement of the Western frontier.

Reviews

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK from Vogue and TIME Magazine

The story has it all: the bloody hell of war . . . revenge, corruption, injustice. Even some romance. Is that Netflix calling . . . A vivid tale of frontier adventure and peril.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune

A vivid tale.
People

Moore graces us with another [novel] this spring . . . a welcome new display of her masterful approach to the undercurrent of violence that she believes runs beneath all human behavior. . . .The Lost Wife is its own kind of crime story. . . . Her deceptively simple sentences are like geysers. The churning energy underneath is violent, animal and sexual.
The Los Angeles Times

Susanna Moores remarkable new novel. . . . based on a true account of . . . the Sioux Uprising of 1862. . . . [is] thrilling. . . . an emotionally intense portrait of a resourceful woman whose courageand consciencewill be horrible tested by war and barbarism. . . . While the tone of The Lost Wife is intimate, the sweep of history and of a vast continent is palpable. . . Moores control never falters.
The Wall Street Journal

A stirring portrait of the American West. . . . [The Lost Wife] captures . . . the lost wives and lost souls whose illusions had carried them to a vaunted frontier whose promise had become saturated in blood . . . Moores steely vision of the American West recognizes few, if any, heroes. The result is a repudiationsolemn yet stirringof the idealized fable of the American West.
The Washington Post

Moore is often called a cult writer. I find her to be one of the most compelling novelists alive. . . . [The Lost Wife is] concise and brutally incisive. . . . As ever, Susanna Moore is unflinching.
Stephanie Danler, Air Mail, Susanna Moore Isnt Done Running Away

Susanna Moores eighth novel, set in 1855, follows 25-year-old Sarah Browne as she . . . heads west to the Minnesota Territory. . . . When the Sioux Uprising of 1862 eruptsafter the federal government never fulfills its promise of payments to the tribeSarah and her children are captured, but protected by the Sioux. Sarah sympathizes with her captors, and slips into the gap between her two worlds. The Lost Wife illustrates the devastating outcomes of oppression.
TIME, Here Are the 14 New Books You Should Read in April

Its fitting that The Lost Wife . . . should directly follow Miss Aluminum, [Moores] lustrous 2020 memoir; this book, like that one, tells the story of a woman continuously transformed by difficult relationships and sweeping changes of circumstance. . . . Moores voice is cool and sure, rich with detail.
Vogue, "Book It"

Her writing is so precise and perceptive, so disturbing, frightening and erotic all at once . . . this profoundly clever woman with her life in her hands.
Lucie Whitehouse, author of Before We Met

Susanna Moore belongs to a small class of writers whose work performs the paradoxical miracle of giving solace by offering none.
The Writer

Moore (In the Cut) returns with a bracing and daring account of a woman who tries to build a new life on the American frontier. . . . This is a masterwork of Americana.
Publishers Weekly, starred review

Based partly on a womans account of her abduction along with her children during the Sioux Uprising in 1862, Moores novel is a tense, absorbing tale of adversity and survival. . . . Moore has imagined a brave, perceptive woman with no illusions about the hypocrisy of those who proclaim themselves civilized. . . . A devastating tale rendered with restrained serenity.
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Moore's powerful story dramatizes tyranny against women and brutality and injustice against Native Americans, reminding us of the many untold tragedies that shape our history."
Booklist

A breathtaking tale of love and war on the 19th century American frontier. . . . Susanna Moores impressively taut and evocative new novel, The Lost Wife . . . brings life on the frontier into vivid, often brutal focus through the prism of female experience.
The Telegraph (UK)

[A] compelling tale of survival, loyalty and exploitation.
The Bookseller (UK)

Author Bio

Susanna Moore is the author of several novels, including In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties, and The Whiteness of Bones, and four books of nonfiction. She lives in New York City.