A welcome new display of [Moore's] masterful approach to the undercurrent of violence that she believes runs beneath all human behavior ... Moore is a master of smallness. Her deceptively simple sentences are like geysers. The churning energy underneath is violent, animal and sexual.
Remarkable ... The Lost Wife is indeed based on a true account of one woman’s experiences during the Sioux Uprising of 1862. It is, therefore, a thrilling if appalling adventure story. But this narrative is also an emotionally intense portrait of a resourceful woman whose courage—and conscience—will be horribly tested by war and barbarism ... While the tone of The Lost Wife is intimate, the sweep of history and of a vast continent is nonetheless palpable ... Ms. Moore’s control never falters.
Spare, lyrical ... Moore’s title captures not only Sarah’s anguish but also that of all the lost wives and lost souls whose illusions had carried them to a vaunted frontier whose promise had become saturated in blood. In replacing long-held legends with traumas, Moore’s steely vision of the American West recognizes few, if any, heroes. The result is a repudiation — solemn yet stirring — of the idealized fable of the American West.
Searing ... Wakefield’s narrative is a perfect fit for Moore. The author of seven novels and four works of nonfiction, she typically writes of the past with quiet insight through the eyes of women who are often liminal figures, though not, of course, to themselves ... Moore’s narration is detached, spare, often eloquent in its terseness, and almost without affect ... The details are tartly precise. So are her striking observations, offered without sentimentality or fanfare ... Beautifully crafted.
The story has it all: the bloody hell of war, racism, sexism, true grit, culture clash, revenge, corruption, injustice. Even some romance ... Moore's undertaking, as a white woman writing about Native Americans, is fraught, to say the least. While she succeeds in creating a vivid tale of frontier adventure and peril, her book is best seen as a portal to more reading (including the Wakefield book, still widely available) aimed at a fuller understanding of a watershed in Minnesota history.
Clear-eyed and riveting ... Sarah is a powerful narrator, utterly devoid of self-pity, a woman who observes herself and others with ruthless honesty ... It is a complex business, as a non-Indigenous writer, to write of Indigenous lives. Moore keeps her focus sharply on Sarah’s experience ... This compact narrative is a brief, harsh glimpse of the bloody past that stains the present.
Moore’s powerful story dramatizes tyranny against women and brutality and injustice against Native Americans, reminding us of the many untold tragedies that shape our history.
Bracing and daring ... Despite the economy of Sarah’s urgent narration, which reads like hurried diary entries, Moore finds room for many striking observations, such as the surreal nature of a massacre ... This is a masterwork of Americana.
A tense, absorbing tale ... In Sarah, Moore has imagined a brave, perceptive woman with no illusions about the hypocrisy of those who proclaim themselves civilized. Fearlessly defiant, she emerges as the moral center of Moore’s compelling novel ... A devastating tale rendered with restrained serenity.
