Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Weird West

Lone Women by Victor Lavelle

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“On Tuesday, Adelaide Henry had been a farmer. On Wednesday, she became a fugitive.” This is the story of Adelaide Henry who in 1915 takes off from her home in California in possession of a steamer trunk that has something trapped inside it.  Her parents are dead, and Adelaide is headed to Montana, planning to be a “lone woman” and going to homestead for two years before earning the land she has made viable for herself.  But the something in that trunk is going to […]

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.”

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

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I really liked this one! But the ending didn’t do as much for me as the first 1/3 did. It all wrapped up too fast and too neatly for me. I wanted to see the struggle and the nitty gritty details! But then again, I nearly always appreciate a longer book over a shorter one, so this very could be just a me thing here and you might love it (as the rest of my book club did!) Lone Women takes place around 1915 in […]

Not a Disney fairy tale

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

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I recently ‘retired’ due to health reasons, and this was the first book I’ve read since that I couldn’t put down, and I didn’t have to! That’s a pretty cool feeling. One of my medications forbids me to eat for half an hour after taking it, so I’ve been taking it, reading for 30 minutes, then reading some more when I finally get breakfast. It’s awesome.  Apollo and Emma have what they think is a lovely normal life, including Baby Brian. When Emma starts acting […]

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.”

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

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CBR Bingo – Violence Tis the season to be a little spooked! Full scaredy cat disclosure: I am not a huge horror fan, completely eschewing the genre in both film and television, but I can get down with some scary books. Maybe it’s because my imagination isn’t as vivid as images on the screen, so sometimes I like to live on the literary edge. Many of my friends are big into having the bejeebus scared out of them, so good for a recommendation, which is […]

Here’s an interesting moment in any friendship. That time when one person has revealed something essential about themselves and the other must decide if they can accept it.

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

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CBR15PASSPORT: (Stamp #10: Different Genres, Horror) CBR15BINGO: (Strange Worlds square: Lavalle specializes in infusing strange worlds into the real world.) I read Lavalle’s The Changeling a handful of years ago when it first came out. Like that novel, Lone Women is a story about something very essential wrapped up in a mixed genre blanket of fairy/folktale, horror, and in this case, western. While The Changeling was about postpartum depression and what it means to be a parent, Lone Women is, as the title implies, about […]

A Woman is a Mule, or “What’s in that trunk, Adelaide?”, or a Novel of Second Chances

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

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I met Victor LaValle at a literary fest a few years ago. While handing him a copy of The Changeling, which was his latest novel at the time and the book I had just finished reading, I said to him, “I feel like I’m the person you’re writing these books for. You’re writing these books for me.” And I meant it then and I mean it now. There’s a point at which LaValle started writing the books he knew he was meant to write (he has […]



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