Book Review: Outlawed

Despite never really associating much to them in my youth, western and cowboy stories have seemed to have taken a notable hold on me at this present time in my life.  I know my earliest introduction to the world of western tales was through my Grandad.  I remember being down at his house on weekends and seeing him watching cowboy movies, most of the time a John Wayne one. As a kid I was too interested in fictional worlds of fantasy or science fiction to find any interest in the set up of outlaws in the western frontier, but as I’ve grown in age, my appreciation for that period of time has come a bit more into the forefront.  Living in the late eighteen hundreds couldn’t have been easy due to the lack of proper scientific developments and the limited mindsets a lot of people had back then.  It was a tough landscape and the only way to survive it for a lot of folks was to embrace the cruelty of life and become an outlaw.  When life throws you a bad hand, are you really in the wrong for throw the hand back at it? Well, that was often the justification for a lot of outlaws back then, it was a dog-eat-dog world. That idea of overcoming a cruel world by embracing an outlaw’s life is the epicenter to my latest read as well, a western tale with a slightly different focus called Outlawed, written by Anna North.

Ada is a woman who had her whole life ahead of her. Married to a strapping young man and living close to her family in the remote town of Fairchild; you couldn’t blame Ada for feeling content in the role of being a modest wife and mother for the remainder of her years.  Tragedy changes her plans however, when a failure to conceive a child ends up with Ada being abandoned by her husband and forced to go on the run from the local sheriff after the town associate her barrenness to witchcraft and accuse her of being a witch. Fleeing to a religious convent, Ada soon learns of a female physician who is studying the nature of barrenness in order to understand the scientific root of it’s cause on women. Wishing to study under this physician, Ada is pointed to the notorious Hole in the Wall outlaw gang by the convents Reverend Mother.  The mother notes this gang consist of women mistreated in their own ways by the cruelty of the world around them and it’s through them she may find a way to travel out west and find the physician. After arriving at their remote camp, Ada comes to meet the gang and their leader known as The Kid.  The Kid’s a devout leader with an ambitious plan to change the foundation of western society for the better.  In exchange for Ada’s medical skills and her part in a dangerous plan, The Kid promises to aid Ada in her journey to meet the respective physician. It soon becomes apparent that Ada has bit off more than she can chew however as she finds herself ostracized even within the confines of her new group of company and with the law out to find her and bring her back to Fairchild, can Ada survive the nature of the world she now finds herself in or will she suffer the same fate as many others have?

I like the idea of this story and its unique approach to telling a non-conventional western tale. Ada is a character you can really empathize with in light of her poor circumstances. A core running theme of this story is about the oppression women of this period felt and how little room to fight back they were ever afforded. The idea that they are given a maternal role to fit and if for any reason they fail to fit within that role that should be cast out from society. It’s a theme which still has relevancy in today’s modern world but I appreciate the bluntness of its delivery in the period in which the narrative is set.  It’s a story filled to the brim with a lot of feministic elements which helps give the story a strong foundation in which to leave its message and differentiate itself from other western stories.  While the ideas and themes of the story are compelling, I can’t say the same for the remainder of its structure or delivery.  Ada’s story starts out well enough, but I just can’t help but feel the motives behind the sequence of events which unfold are not all that well thought out.  The means in which Ada and the Hole in the Wall Gang get into these unfortunate series of events feels un-cohesive and lacks any sense of direction.  It feels like Anna North knew the themes she wanted to focus on but had no real means of establishing a well-structured story to tackle them.  It’s narrative structure meanders from point to point with little relevancy and the ending in itself feels incredibly underwhelming from a logical perspective as well as a character one.

The book does itself no favours with it’s pacing either. For a relatively low page count, this story drags along unnecessarily in a lot of moments.  I appreciate maybe Anna North wanted to utilize a slower pace to put more focus on her characters and the concepts that entangle them together, but she utilizes them in moments where they aren’t even a focus.  There are literal pages where we drag along as events unfold that lead to no notable payoff, it’s frustrating to spend so much time reading section of this book which really could have been condensed and the book would have been better for it.  It’s a conciliation at least that in terms of formatting and writing, Anna North has a strong sense of how to construct a scene. Moments where the characters exchange dialogue or we dive deep into Ada’s mental thoughts, the usage of words and the structure in the exchange is eloquent and gives a nice sense of understanding to how people interact with one another and how they process aspects of grief or turmoil. Her writing style is really appreciated in the moments they really matter so I cannot fault her there.

Outlawed is a hard book to really rate.  I feel for as many positives as I can attribute to its themes and writing style, there are just as many flaws that undermine it’s structuring and pacing.  I think it’s positives shine a little brighter than it’s negatives in retrospect however.  On the whole this is an interesting western tale which seeks to not only be different from the typical stories of this genre, but in turn utilize the backdrop to discuss a lot of relevant stuff that I imagine many female readers will reciprocate with in the modern day.