Outlawed takes the genre of the Western – a traditionally masculine arena – and turns it on its head. Fleeing to a convent, and then onwards to join the notorious Hole in the Wall gang, Ada must leave everything she knows and loves if she wants to live. But when her dream marriage doesn’t bear fruit, she begins to fear for her life.
They are hanged, or put in stocks, or jailed for life.Īda, a midwife’s daughter, knows that witchcraft isn’t real and that these are dangerous superstitions. But women who cannot conceive – women who are deemed barren – are witches and are blamed for all the misfortune which befalls other women in their town. Women who have had five or more children are left largely alone. Women who have had multiple children are permitted to leave abusive husbands. Women who are able to bear healthy babies earn themselves privileged statuses in society – though still not above the men.
After a Great Flu has decimated the population, fertility is prized above all else. ĭescribed as a mash up of The Handmaid’s Talewith Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Outlawed takes place in “the year of our Lord, 1894” in an America which is like the one we know, and not. There are few things that will turn a woman to becoming an outlaw faster than the threat of being hanged as a witch. So it is for Ada, the protagonist of Anna North’s latest novel, Outlawed.
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