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Winner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction • From one of our most compelling and sensual writers comes a searing, immersive novel based partly on a true story, about a devastating Native American revolt and the woman caught in the middle of the conflict
A Best Book of the Year: The Wall Street Journal and The New Statesman
“A masterwork. . . . The Lost Wife evokes a profound
sense of time, place, and moral clarity.” —Esquire
In the summer of 1855, Sarah Browne abandons her husband and child to make the long and difficult journey from Rhode Island to Minnesota Territory. When she arrives at a small frontier post with no prospect of work or money, she quickly remarries and has two children. Her new husband, Dr. John Brinton, is the resident physician at the Indian Agency. Anticipating unease there, Sarah instead finds acceptance and kinship among the Sioux women at a nearby reservation.
The Sioux tribes are wary of the white settlers and resent the rampant
theft of their land. Promised payments by the federal government are never made, and starvation and disease soon begin to decimate their community. Tragically and inevitably, this leads to the Sioux Uprising of 1862. During the conflict, Sarah and her children are abducted by two Sioux warriors, who protect her, but because she sympathizes with her captors, Sarah becomes an outcast to the white settlers. In the end, she is lost to both worlds.
Intimate and raw, The Lost Wife is a brilliantly subversive tale of the seminal and shameful moment in America’s conquest of the West.
