It is winter in the New World, and a tiny European fort with a toehold on the continent is dying, its transplanted inhabitants withering from starvation and disease. From this hellhole, a teenage servant girl escapes into the wilderness. Her story of survival drives Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. How she manages to eat, sleep, and make her way, fleeing pursuers she imagines, correctly, are after her, is one current of the novel. But her thoughts as she observes the natural world form the heart of the story, which is a gradual dismantling of her received ideas of god and empire. By the end, her changing god is not a punitive, transactional overseer of ritual, but a bright force animating all life in the harsh and visceral beauty of the world.

Something tore in the skies above and the new downsifting snow was no longer needles of ice as it had been when she had first escaped the fort but had become now soft slow flakes that began to collect upon the old surface of snow and to obscure the steps she had made behind her.

Thank you good snow for your aid, the girl thought.

Press on, girl, the snow said, in falling.

 **

It was not long afterward that the voices descended to her from the sky.

At first, she could not distinguish what they said, but soon they spoke to her louder and slid into the mistress's tones, scolding. Wicked sprite, verminous bit of stuff, thou last least unlettered Zed, who fled thy duty in thy mistress's worst need. For it is said thou must submit thyself unto the elder, yea all be subject one to another and be clothed with humility, for god resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.

So the voice of the mistress hissed to her out of the dark forest.

And forgetting herself the girl said aloud into the falling snow, Ah but does the good book not say also to escape to the mountains lest ye be consumed?

And she laughed because she knew it did say this and that she had won the point.

But the forest grew wary at the laugh, this new noise made within its sleeping stillness, and the girl had to slap her own cheek to hush herself and goad her body forward.

The mistress's voice fell itself a flake and the girl in her running left it behind her.

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Links:

• Why Lauren Groff Decided to Venture Into The Vaster Wilds – Dan Kois, Slate, September 12, 2023

  
  

• Video: Lauren Groff on The Vaster Wilds, The Atlantic, 2023

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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