She is exiled from her town and permitted to live in a local convent, but eventually she grows dissatisfied with that life and leaves to join the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, headed by a vaguely creepy cult-leader-like figure known only as The Kid. This is the fate that Ada walks into, when she fails to conceive within one year of her wedding. If a woman cannot get pregnant within a “reasonable” time after marriage, she is deemed barren and, often, is hanged as a witch. In this dystopian setting, women serve only one purpose: to bear children. Now, individual towns exist as self-governed sovereignties, and an only-slightly distorted fundamentalist Christianity reigns supreme. In the mid-19th century, a mysterious Flu swept the United States of America and decimated the population. Outlawed is the story of Ada, a young white woman living somewhere in an alternative version of the American West. I’m willing to give Anna North the benefit of the doubt as to her intentions, but this ain’t it.

In 2021, one would hope that a book whose stated purpose is to provide feminist social commentary would be able to offer a sensitive, intersectional view of its proposed topics. This book is the very definition of White Feminism, and it uses Black and queer women as set dressing and props for the cishet white protagonist’s own journey. For a book that markets itself as a subversive alt-history tale, Outlawed is screamingly reductive, gender essentialist, and trans exclusionary.

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