Into the Wild With Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff’s new novel, The Vaster Wilds, begins with a high-octane escape: under the cover of darkness, in the dead of a gruesome winter, a young woman flees colonial Jamestown, bound for parts unknown. Pursued by English soldiers and menaced by the brutal New England winter, her frantic flight threatens to kill her at every turn—but to remain in the settlement, riven by plague and famine, would be unbearable. For this young woman, known to readers as “the girl,” an uncertain future is preferable to certain death.