The Vaster Wilds

Starred review from June 5, 2023
Groff’s extraordinary latest (after Matrix) tracks the life of an adolescent servant girl who flees a Jamestownesque settlement in colonial America and sets out across the wilderness. Traveling in winter, the unnamed narrator sustains herself by hunting and gathering. Despite the harsh conditions, she delights in the natural scenery, which Groff depicts with wrenching beauty (“she saw in the dim and silvery light the wind lifting lighter snow and sculpting it into a shining city with rooftops and chimneys and a steeple and even the smoke of fires merrily ascending from the chimneys toward heaven”). Through the girl’s memories, the reader learns she was adopted at four from a parish poorhouse in England by a well-off woman and her husband and was tormented by the couple’s older son. Several years later, the husband dies and the woman marries an ambitious minister. They force the girl to accompany them to the New World and care for their newborn baby. The colony turns out to be a godforsaken place wracked by illness, lack of food, and violent confrontations with Indigenous people. There are many exciting episodes—the narrator encounters a bear, a wolf, and an unruly former Jesuit priest who also subsists in the wild—and the staggering ending reveals the details surrounding her escape. Groff builds and maintains suspense on multiple levels, while offering an unflinching portrayal of her heroine’s desperation and will to survive. This is a triumph. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.

Starred review from June 10, 2024

Fleeing from a series of cruelties that culminate in a horrifying incident in her colonial U.S. settlement, a servant girl escapes into the harsh winter wilderness. Beyond the walls, she faces hunger, disease, and dangers the likes of which she cannot fathom, yet the true monsters are repeatedly revealed to be her fellow humans. With only faith to guide her on her frantic trek, she somehow adapts to the dense, unfamiliar forest surrounding her. Groff (Matrix) sets forth a harrowing, heartrending historical novel about the oft-glossed-over horrors of the early colonial United States. Groff's intricate, atmospheric narrative and raw but lyrical writing style will leave listeners emotionally ravaged yet somehow energized. Narrator January LaVoy meets the fraught, fast-paced tale head-on with an emotive and absorbing performance. Her portrayal invokes anguish, promise, and perseverance to create a listening experience that goes beyond engaging to exhilarating. VERDICT This audio will appeal to listeners seeking haunting historical fiction about the complex, consequential realities of the human instinct for survival. Recommended for fans of Geraldine Brooks, Charles Frazier, and Jesmyn Ward.--Lauren Hackert

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