The daughter of a midwife, Ada grows up in a society that's obsessed with reproduction. Though she herself isn’t obsessed. So when she’s unable to get pregnant as a 17-year-old newlywed, she becomes ostracized by her husband’s family. There’s no use for barren women. In fact, being barren is a crime punishable by death. In order to protect Ada, her mother sends her to live with the Sisters of the Holy Child, hoping to keep her safe.

While at the nunnery, Ada devours books, trying to research the ins and outs of reproduction and infertility. In her quest to understand, she becomes sort of an expert on the subject. Because Ada wants to learn more and use her training, she joins up with the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang. Ada soon finds friendship and connection with gendering-bending outlaws, and becomes a "doctor" to other women. The gang members are looking for freedom and wanting to form a separatist group where they can be themselves.

This book is a Western that's recast the protagonist as a female outlaw and the hero is “The Kid” who appears to be non-binary. (“The Kid is just The Kid”). It’s also a story about learning, making choices, taking chances, finding your people, and living on the periphery of society. It highlights what our humanity might look like if things were different.

Personally, I was not connected to the characters or the plot. The rave reviews and book blurb made me excited read it, but after digging in, it was not my thing. It was not a page-turner nor did it make my pulse rise.

Special thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an advanced digital copy of the book, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

This alternative western was well done! The characters were fun to get to know. The stigma of being barren is felt by many women and there could be some triggers here, but it was still well done. There was a lag toward the middle of the book, but the adventure did come back and make it an addictive read.

I was given an Advanced Reader Copy of this book through NetGalley via the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Overall, I thought this book was fine. It started off pretty strong but once Ada joined up with the Hole in the Wall Gang, it actually kind of fell apart for me.

Most of the supporting characters in the Gang blurred together, with too little character development for any of them to really stand out. Interesting idea but I found the execution to be lacking. The only thing driving me to finish was the next book on my list.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!

A fiercely feminist, action-packed Western was something I didn’t know I needed until I read Anna North’s Outlawed. Set in an alternate America in the year 1894, our teenage heroine Ada is forced to flee the safety of home when she is unable to become pregnant after a year of marriage. In Outlawed’s reality, women are prided in society for their ability to bear children and hanged as witches if they prove to be barren. Ada finds solace by joining the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang - a group of outlaws pillaging their way across the land. Led by an enigmatic, nonbinary figure known as the Kid, the gang is compiled of women who, like Ada, were ousted from their communities due to their inability to conform to societal standards. The diverse band of outlaws features gender nonconforming and queer characters who aim to upheave and dismantle the patriarchy and fight for an equitable existence.

North draws on the themes of race, relationship to religion, fertility, and gender roles/identity to craft a fully realized dystopian society. The pacing of the novel is quick and brimming with action that forces readers to continue turning the pages to find out which direction the plot will turn. If anything, I wish we could have spent more time getting to know the individual members of the gang, some of whom tended to blend together due to their similar backstories and quirks. As a whole, North’s clever ingenuity churns out a modern-day tale built on the foundation of a historical setting that feels both familiar and uniquely singular all at once.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury USA for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If I ever contemplate becoming an outlaw, it will absolutely have to be in the company of queer outlaws.
This was a fun trip. I don’t give much thought to Western stories, but this really clicked for me, perhaps because of all the queerness + a spunky nun! It’s pacing from the beginning drew me in and kept me curious.

MC Ada practices in midwifery, but ironically is unable to get pregnant. And in a time when medical knowledge is sparse, when bad things start to happen around town, they look to any “supernatural” cause. In this case, being barren is that cause and Ada is responsible. Instead of being hanged, Ada flees and eventually joins a gang of queer and colored folks with a non-binary leader.

Think Ocean’s 8, but make it Western.
For anyone wondering, the queer storylines come from the secondary characters and there is just a cameo of a hetero love interest for the MC.
The ending does not tie up on the most expected way, but I still felt it was unusually balanced and enjoyed that.

Every night as I read this I would tell my husband “Shhh, I’m reading my western!” Those words are honestly words I never thought I would say. I love absolutely everything that Anna North did with this book. The writing was quick and flowed beautifully from one paragraph to the next. The gender queer cast of characters were well fleshed out and so easy to love and root for. Historical fiction isn’t usually my thing but North’s Wild West is where it’s at.

A common theme of the countless Western books and movies of the last century has been a romanticization of heroism that flourishes with masculine courage and strength. Outlawed flips the script on this theme entirely, providing us with a fresh take on outlaw cowboy mythology that switches out the straight white male narrative for, well, almost everything else.

Written by LA-born, Brooklyn-based author Anna North, Outlawed is set in 1894 and tells the story of Ada, a young woman expected to follow a specific path by marrying young and, God willing, birthing many healthy children. When Ada struggles to become pregnant, her mother, a midwife to whom she is apprenticed, tells her daughter that she may not be the cause of her own barren state. She advises Ada to seek out another partner, pointing her in the direction of an older male friend who shows her that sexual gratification isn't only for men. However, Ada is still unable to conceive a child.

Full review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr268416

After finishing this book, I had to take some time to sit with it and truly explore how I felt about the story. My initial gut reaction was that I generally enjoyed the story but I was not sure if I loved it; however, the more I sat with it the more I discovered how impactful this work truly is and how much it affected me.

This amazing novel is a great queer feminist adventure set against the backdrop of the American west. Granted this is not your traditional western novel since it appears to draw inspiration from other great works, such as the Crucible, but it provides plenty of cowboy actions to keep you fully engaged. While westerns aren’t my usual choice, the author does a phenomenal job of keeping us focused on the characters and their struggles while subtly reminding us that this is set in a quasi-dystopian wester world where a large portion of the population has perished, the U.S. no longer exists, and barren women are executed as witches.

To be honest, I really fell for the characters and found that I was hurt for them, outraged for them, and eventually rooting for them despite their less than reputable actions. My only reason for not giving this novel 5 stars, is that it felt like it tried to cover too many topics at once and so the effort at including areas of intersectionality sometimes felt forced or one-dimensional. Despite this minor criticism, I loved reading a western novel that had queer, BIPOC, women leading the charge. The representation in this novel was beautiful and I felt empowered reading this story. This is a must read.

*I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC of Outlaw, which I received for free in return for an honest review.

I was so excited to read this book, both because of the plot and the sheer thrill of reading a western outside of the traditional market: queer, feminist, and not historical fiction! The writing style is very clear-cut and easy to read, reminiscent of True Grit. Definitely recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley for a free arc in exchange for my honest review.

Well... The writing was good until I got a lesson in the bedroom I didn't expect from the book blurb. I couldn't finish this book club book. I would advise reading some other reviews before getting this one. Not for me..

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Trigger warning for mental illness, homophobia, misogyny, and rape. Caution: there are vague spoilers ahead!)</i>


In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. Like a lot of things, it didn’t happen all at once. First I had to get married.


“When someone believes in something,” Mama said, “you can’t just take it away. You have to give them something to replace it.“


“We may be barren in body, dear Doctor, but we shall be fathers of many nations, fathers and mothers both. You see, when we found this land, I knew it was promised not just for us, but for the descendants of our minds and hearts, all those cast out of their homes and banished by their families, all those slandered and maligned, imprisoned and abused, for no crime but that God saw fit not to plant children in their wombs. I knew that we would build a nation of the dispossessed, where we would be not barren women, but kings.”


***

The eldest of a midwife’s four daughters, and her mother’s apprentice at that, seventeen-year-old Ada Magnusson is more scientifically-minded than most in the small town of Fairchild. Yet she’s still subject to their superstitions, which are turned on Ada in full force when she fails to become pregnant after a year of marriage. Things go from bad to worse when an outbreak of the German measles results in three miscarriages. The people of Fairchild need someone to blame - and Ada has become their newest witch.


Ada’s mom sends her off to a convent, the Sisters of the Holy Child, which is mostly populated by barren women like herself. It is here that Ada begins her life of crime, copying illicit books in the storeroom under the library in exchange for coins to spend on yet more books. Ada is determined to unlock the secrets of her "treacherous” body - to find out why some women are incapable of bearing children - so that she may save other unlucky women from ostracism, jail, or the gallows.


It’s here that she learns of Mrs. Alice Schaeffer, a doctor studying infertility, and her call for research subjects in the west. But in place of Pagosa Springs, the Mother Superior gives Ada a choice: the habit or the Hole in the Wall. Ada chooses the latter, a notorious gang of outlaws led by the Kid, “ a man tall as a pine tree and as strong as a grizzly bear, who once shot a deputy’s hat off his head while riding backward on his horse.”


The Hole in the Wall Gang is not what Ada expected: a seven-member found family of “deviant” women (some of them queer, and arguably nonbinary), all cast off from society like Ada. Here Ada - christened “the Doctor” - finds a tenuous sort of kinship, even as she longs for Mrs. Schaeffer’s promise of knowledge. But the Gang is always a few botched jobs away from starvation, even as the Kid’s grand dreams threaten to steer them towards implosion.


The world created by Anna North in OUTLAWED is fascinating, at once both wholly familiar and eerily strange - almost like an Uncanny Valley of space and place. The book feels like historical fiction but is really alternative history: in this version of the American West, a Great Flu ravaged the country in the 1830s, killing 9 out of 10 men, women, and children.


The new Christianity that rose out of the wreckage celebrates fertility: women are encouraged to have as many children as possible, and doing so grants them “special” rights. For example, a woman may divorce her husband after having three children, and a woman with four children is practically unimpeachable. Premarital sex isn’t necessarily a bad thing - but if you run around with a guy for long enough without becoming pregnant, your barrenness (not your promiscuity) will become the grist of rumor mills.


This obsession with BABIES! and women’s bodies is all downsides, of course: being childfree is not a valid lifestyle choice, and women who don’t have kids are branded as witches. And of course, abortion is illegal - even in cases of rape and incest.


OUTLAWED feels a bit like a Western spin on THE HANDMAID’S TALE, save for these little details; it’s rather disconcerting, like everything is off by four or five degrees, and the ground is all wibbly wobbling under you. And I kind of love it. The setting is its own character.


I also adore the Hole in the Wall Gang - no surprise there! - the dynamics of which are messy and complex and wonderful. The Kid, Cassie, Elzy, Texas, Lo, News, Agnes Rose - if I was going to take on the white supremacist patriarchy, I’d want them by my side.


The big score - aka the Kid’s plan to rob the Fiddleback bank and then use the proceeds to buy the whole gorram town - is as daring as it is full of holes, but damned if I wasn’t rooting for it. And while it doesn’t go down quite like in the Kid’s imagination, the ending is so much more grounded and inspiring than I might have hoped for. (I started 2021 with a new RGB calendar, and January’s quote seems apropos: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”)


OUTLAWED is an odd, unexpected, thoughtful, heartfelt feminist tale about trying to make the world a better place - even as tries its damnedest to grind you down. So, like, the kind of story we need now more than ever.

I enjoyed this contemporary spin on the classic western tale. Ada is an outlaw with a conscience and she and The Hole in the Wall Gang become the stuff of legends. You'll find gender and race issues along with women struggling with desperation, loyalty, and testing the bonds of friendship. This western was a breath of fresh air - a unique and entertaining read.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange form my review.

Outlawed by Anna North was a let down for me. Not every book is going to blow me away but I had really high hopes for this one. And it failed to meet expectations.

I follow Reese’s Book Club each month and I generally try to read what she recommends. She’s had some great picks in the past (most recently I really enjoyed The Chicken Sisters). But I was not feeling Outlawed. It was a struggle for me to get through this one. I started it on a Sunday night, set it down. Tried it again on Tuesday night and did finish it. And yeah, it’s a two star read for me.

I actually didn’t realize going in that this is an alternate history take on the classic Western story: stranger from another town. I’m not a huge Western fan but even this alt-history one just didn’t resonate with me at all.

There is a devastating flu in this story (not exactly what I feel like reading at the moment) that killed majority of the country and led to the end of the U.S. as it was known at the time. So now it truly is the Wild West out there with sheriffs in the towns calling all the shots. The flu also seems to have made many people infertile but the blame is always on the women. They’re either hung as witches or cast away from their homes.

I’ll give props that it’s creative for sure. And I was interested enough to keep going with it. But unfortunately, the character development is actually pretty weak. Maybe it was just timing or what, but Outlawed was not for me.

Set in 1894 as a western, it is a different American West. An American West where if women are barren they are considered to be witches and hanged. Our main character is barren and on the run. She joins a gang of other women and becomes an Outlaw. They rob banks and stagecoaches to have money to get through the winters. There are shootouts and horse chases. This book has a ton of action.

This was a fun retelling of the American west and the Hole in Wall gang. A group of outcast women with bounties on their heads learn how to make lives for themselves. It was a real page turner and I finished the book in just a few sittings.
I received a galley copy of the book from NetGalley. My opinion is my own.

"Outlawed" is a relatively short book that I savored. It's fairly predictable the way things get started...but from then on, I had no idea what to expect and was delighted at every turn. I hung onto every detail and didn't want it to end! Absolutely loved it.

It’s the early 1890s America, an alternate version where a devastating sickness tore through the country and was viewed by many as a cleansing from God. The few who remained were expected to go forth and multiply, rebuilding the nation in His image and it is that ideal that has carried through the generations to Ada, a teen who is looking forward to her wedding day and becoming a mother.

A year later with no pregnancy, Ada’s sent from her husband’s family’s home. In Fairchild, a woman’s worth is directly related to how many children she has – and how quickly she can conceive. Outlawed offers an interesting stance on 19th Century women: premarital sex is fine, just not too often; if a girl sleeps with a boy too many times and doesn’t become pregnant, well word will quickly spread – and with it any chance of finding a husband. However, once a woman has children, all the power transfers to her. “A woman with three children could divorce her husband and she would probably find another man to marry her – she never said as much, but I knew that was why Mama had waited until after she had Janie and Jessamine to leave our daddy and bring us to Fairchild, where the old midwife had recently left town. A woman with four children could do as she pleased, marry or not, and I knew that was one reason no one spoke ill of Mama when she chose not to take another husband after Bee’s daddy left.” As the daughter of the town’s midwife, Ada is given some leniency, but even that has its limits and the sheriff’s protection can only go so far before fingers begin pointing Ada’s way. Barren women are labeled witches, blamed for miscarriages, deformities, illness.

Taken in by a convent of similarly-labeled women, Ada works at transcribing books. One book in particular catches her eye: Mrs. Alice Schaeffer’s Handbook of Feminine Complaints. While Ada learned a great deal under her mother’s tutelage, she wants to know more, wants an understanding of why she cannot have the children she so desperately wanted. It is while reading this book that Ada comes to the conclusion that she must find this woman, learn from her – and possibly find a cure. To reach Mrs. Alice Schaeffer, however, Ada must find a way to her town. And to do that, she must find the Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by the infamous Kid.

Outlawed is a book I wanted to read from the moment it first appeared on my radar. Hailed as The Crucible meets True Grit and featuring a queer, feminist gang, I was immediately curious and jumped right in the moment I was able to get a copy of my own. For a good portion of the novel it lived up to my expectations: Ada’s taken in by the Hole in the Wall Gang – and discovers many of them are like her, unable to have children and thus deemed a witch, or left their homes on their own accord. There’s at least one lesbian couple in their group and the Kid comes across as nonbinary. They’re all naturally wary of bringing an outsider into their ranks and Ada must prove her worth. And with Ada’s arrival comes the Kid’s most daring plot yet: a robbery that, if the gang could pull it off – and make it out alive – could provide them all (and others like them) with the safe haven they’ve been searching for.

I will say that while I did enjoy the story, the characters – namely the members of the gang – all meshed into one. I adored Lark, a fellow thief, but the gang’s members: Cassie, Elzy, News, Texas, I truly couldn’t tell them apart even after spending an entire book reading about them. I knew Elzy was tall. That’s…about it. Normally I love a big, full cast, but here they lost their individuality and became one unit. Tex could have easily stood in for Cassie or News in certain scenes and I would have been none the wiser.

The other downfall to this one was the ending. I spent the book following Ada’s story and wanted to see her reach her end goal, only to be left wanting. I was completely captivated by the feminist take on Westerns that Outlawed promised and had an overall great time reading this one. I just wish it would have had a different ending, though I’m sure other readers will absolutely love how Ada’s journey ended.

This book is definitely on the center stage for 2021 for a reason. It’s so unique. It combines late 1800 western (totally not my thing normally) with powerful feminism and LGBTQ themes. It’s the story of women exiled from normal society and forced to face off against the society that rejected them in order to survive. I loved the characters and their strife. I honestly wish it was longer!

A different kind of Western, this one centers on a female cast. Quirky and fun, I thoroughly enjoyed this fast read.

This is a very unusual book! Living in the mid-West in 1894, Ava is a midwife apprentice to her mother, and a new bride at age 17. A year later, with no baby on the way, barren Ava is branded a witch and her mother convinces her to leave town to save her life. So begins Ava's unique adventure, from home to a convent to the Hole in the Wall Gang, which is a twist on the well-known Western tale of the Gang. Treatment of women, sexuality, religion, and Western themes all mesh together in this fascinating, unforgettable book. Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsburg USA for providing an ARC.

Full review to come.

I was given an Advanced Reader Copy of this book through NetGalley via the publisher in exchange for an honest review