The Vaster Wilds: A Novel by Lauren Groff

A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated, bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive.

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 of 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.

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Praise for The Vaster Wilds

“Extraordinary… Groff builds and maintains suspense on multiple levels, while offering an unflinching portrayal of her heroine’s desperation and will to survive. This is a triumph.” ­—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
 
“Groff's seventh book, a captivating survival story, starts off running….this wholly enveloping book has … deep examinations of faith, dominion, and human nature; Groff's seemingly joyfully related, seamless period prose; and the time-collapsing sense of reading a text channeled directly from the mind of a long-ago-living, breathing woman facing extraordinary circumstances.”—Booklist, Starred Review
 
“Groff’s imaginative journey into a distant time and place is powered by a thrumming engine… Immersion in the girl’s experience provides a virtual vacation from civilization … The writing is inspired, the imaginative power near mystic.”—­Kirkus Reviews
 
“Combines visceral detail and magisterial sweep … Lauren Groff's fifth novel, set in Virginia in the early 17th century, is a classic study of solitude and survival that stars a teenage girl fleeing starvation—and the scene of a crime.” —Shelf Awareness
 
“Illustrate[s] a fluid, almost cyclical understanding of history, and faith’s sticky place within it.” ­—Elle