The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
The Vaster Wilds

The Vaster Wilds

Summary

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'Exhilarating' GUARDIAN
'Her writing has a timeless quality' THE TIMES
'[Has] a visionary quality' OBSERVER

A profound and explosive novel about a spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive


A servant girl escapes from a settlement. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief of everything that her own civilization has taught her.

The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how -and if - we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.

Reviews

  • I could not stop reading. A haunting, thrilling, gripping and rich. An unputdownable adventure, a mystery and a strange beautiful redemption
    Naomi Alderman

About the author

Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies and Matrix, and two short story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and elsewhere, and she was named one of Granta's 2017 Best Young American Novelists.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more