#46 [2024/CBR16] The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

I read The Vaster Wilds (2023) by Lauren Groff because it was on Obama's Favorite Books list last year. I have found that Barack Obama has great taste in literature (although I often skip over the biographies he recommends because they are just too long). I've read Florida by Lauren Groff and had mixed feelings about it. The Vaster Wilds is my first full-length novel by Groff, and I was impressed. 

This story takes place in the winter of 1609-1610 in the Jamestown colony when apparently 80% of its inhabitants died of starvation and disease. The main character is a teenage girl* who flees from the colony and into the woods. She has a cloak, gloves, a couple blankets, flint for fires, and a cup. After barely eating for months, she is a desperate character.

As the girl surmounts challenge after challenge, we sometimes flashback to her life in England before she came to Jamestown. Found alone in an alley and presumed to be the daughter of a whore, the girl was put in an orphanage. The orphanage sold her to her mistress, a woman who used the beautiful, dark-skinned girl as something between a servant and a toy. The mistress had a daughter with some kind of developmental disability, whom the girl took care of and loved as if she were her own. The mistress's older son was a different story.

As the girl struggles to survive in the wilderness, she dreams of the streets of London, with light, food, and warmth. She was never asked if she wanted to come to America. But when her mistress's new husband decided he was going to America to save the souls of the heathens (and/or make his fortune), she was dragged along with the mistress and her daughter. After a wretched crossing with lives and ships lost, they were not expecting what they found in Jamestown.

***SPOILERS***

The girl is a very likeable protagonist. She is smart, self-sufficient, brave, and caring. I wanted to see her find safety and stop suffering. But that's not what happened. Even as she is somewhat successful in getting food, traveling, and caring for herself, she gets weaker and sicker as she goes along. After a head injury and suffering from small pox, it is all too much. She collapses on the edge of a river and dies. The story almost explores other ends to the story. If the girl were able to push through her illness and live on her own in a self-built cabin for years, then she would have been too lonely without human companionship. If the girl had been helped by a neighboring tribe, then she would have given them her small pox and decimated them. There were no happy endings to this story. 

***END SPOILERS***

The writing in this book sometimes reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. The story felt very stark, real, and capable of anything. Groff did a very good job portraying the girl's thoughts and feelings in a way that felt visceral but without melodrama. It was also a very different perspective of the origins of "America" as we know it now. It made me think that this girl, as impressive as she was, would certainly be lost to history. No one would ever know her story.

*The girl was given various names throughout her life including Lamentations and Zed.