A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.

I will read anything Lauren Groff writes. Each of her books carry her singular linguistic brilliance while venturing into uncharted terrain, promising new and devoted readers a literary journey like no other. In her new novel, The Vaster Wilds, Groff pulls readers into the fevered dark heart of colonialism, rife with years of sickness and famine as well as European settlers trespassing upon indigenous peoples and one another.

The Vaster Wilds follows an unnamed escaped servant girl on her quest to freedom through the North American wilderness. In Groff’s gifted hands, we experience both the tenderness and violence of nature, and the fortitude of a girl who has little to sustain herself with beyond her faith, courage, and physical stamina—all of which are tested in frightening and exhilarating ways. This is a novel that will hold you by the throat, forcing you to confront what you hold to be true about spiritual survival while guiding you into communion with the mysteries of the natural world.

Lauren Groff is a poet and a master stylist. Her sentences astonish. The Vaster Wilds is a breathtaking adventure story with the beauty and horror of a gothic fairytale, a book for the most passionate lovers of language and the dreamiest of readers who yearn to get lost in the world of another, almost forgotten time.