She runs west, into the wilderness, into the mountains, into her own darkness...At 19 years old, Mary Boutlan is newly widowed by her own hand and is pursued by two towering, vengeful twins. These trees of men are her murdered husband's brothers and they are close on her careening path into the ragged, unforgiving Canadian Rockies. Alone, except an old mare given by a empathetic benefactoress, she climbs into the heights. There she is chased by scent hounds and the twins, and she is plagued by visions and specters, real and not, phantasmagoric scenes of what may or may not have been her life before this flight. There are those she meets on her journey, the bird lady, the Ridgerunner, Bonny, the dwarf, and the cat-skinner, whose lives also lack steady rhythm and meaning. And each sees something of that in Mary as she flashes in and out of their existences, heading towards what is only known to inevitability and fate. A landslide is fast approaching, perhaps metaphorically, maybe literally, and its harbinger sounds could miss her ears, so overtaken with the echoes of pounding blood. Breathlessly suspenseful and excruciatingly gorgeous against the senses, The Outlander is a novel that floods the reader with the amazing experiences of a young woman fleeing into the wilds of her own making.
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