The Vaster Wilds Audiobook By Lauren Groff cover art

The Vaster Wilds

A Novel

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The Vaster Wilds

By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: January LaVoy
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, TIME, ESQUIRE, VOGUE, LA TIMES, SLATE, HARPER'S BAZAAR and others

"Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is a story about the lengths to which we will go to stay alive."—NPR staff pick

“Lauren Groff just reinvented the adventure novel."—Los Angeles Times

“Glorious…surroundings come alive in prose that lives and breathes upon the page." —Boston Globe

A taut and electrifying novel from celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, about one spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive

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

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. 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.

©2023 Lauren Groff (P)2023 Penguin Audio Historical Fiction Fiction Wilderness Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Inspiring Suspenseful Survival
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Critic reviews

“I know of few other writers whose sentences are so beautiful and so propulsive. The girl embodies a furious onward motion, as does the prose.”—New York Times Book Review

“[A] thrilling historical adventure. . .the existential themes at the heart of Lauren Groff’s fifth novel—the rawness of life, the precious inner-workings of nature, the drive to continue on in the face of challenges—are as timely as they come.”—TIME

"Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is a story about the lengths to which we will go to stay alive."—NPR

Dear Listener,

What inspired me to write this story?
"In 2013, I was leafing through the Smithsonian Magazine in some long-forgotten waiting room when I saw a story that caught my eye, and then the whole of my attention. It was a graphic depiction of what the settlers at Jamestown, Virginia—the first permanent English settlement in the New World—suffered through the awful winter of 1609-1610. As a result of the torments of famine, bad water, social strife, a siege by the understandably angry Indigenous people around them, and horrendous illnesses (different poxes and fluxes and fevers), researchers had discovered proof that the settlers resorted to eating fellow humans. This was the first seed of my novel—this all-body horror—and it sat latent in me until at last I understood that I wanted to write a much larger story about survival, religion, nature, god, and ecstasy. It took a decade, but that seed became The Vaster Wild." – Lauren Groff, writer of The Vaster Wilds
Beautiful Prose • Compelling Survival Story • Perfect Narration • Vivid Descriptions • Historical Authenticity

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Compelling and deeply moving story, beautifully performed. A true spiritual journey through wilderness told astonishingly in the voice and heart of a small “nothing” girl. Lauren Goff is a master storyteller and gifted writer.

Wow

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Prosaic, absolutely amazing descriptions . Takes you in and keeps you there, you’re breathing and starving along with our heroine. Totally recommend

The lyricism is amazing

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Creativity of thoughts, inspiration of resiliency in facing life’s challenges, and the voice of the young narrator forming a credible, fully-developed, relatable character make this a story worth your time—perhaps worthy of a second encounter especially when coming to grips with your own mortality.

A Tale Beautifully Told

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I wanted to love this book, and I can see why people think Groff is a talented writer. Most of the book is the minutia of hunger and pain, punctuated by moments that strain credulity A hideously bloated dead dog is lying in the middle of the road. Instead of walking around it, she chooses to leap over it, barefoot, grazing it with her toe, it explodes all over her, and she vomits on herself. She is utterly starved and exhausted, yet goes to the river, and immediately spears three fish in a row. As they flap around on land, she bludgeons them to death. Why? How? She gets smallpox on top of her starvation and exhaustion, yet accidentally walks up a cliff. At the end of hours of this, she becomes a survival genius in one paragraph, building a house, making traps, weaving doors, skinning animals, and making clothes, etc. There’s a horrible scene with a child I wish I had never read and that is simply not believable. The author includes grand statements about losing faith in God and humanity, the unforgivable decimation of indigenous culture, and the wilderness that feel thrown in with a litany of pioneer tropes in a tone of hyper-dramatic grandiloquence. Too extra for me from start to finish.

Slow torture written too hastily

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All I want is for a book to make me cry. And this one did. The ending is pure poetry—or even better... prose worthy of Virginia Woolf. Groff is truly, and inarguably, one of the great geniuses of our time. The narrator—LaVoy, does her a great service. I love reading Lauren Groff, but I am so glad I listened to this. I think listening made the book even more powerful. It felt like a sermon. I have heard Lauren Groff say that literature is her religion. And it is mine too. This book will forever be in my cannon.

left in tears, grateful tears

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