The Stranger
by Kathryn Hore
Allen & Unwin
Darkwater, named after the brackish water that came from the wells, was a self-sufficient town with the wall protecting the people from the “frightening outside, full of contagion, deformity and chaos”.
Everyone noticed when a stranger rode into town, a town where the borders came up when the world was facing calamity and the virals first began killing populations. It had been a while since the town had seen a visitor and the huge iron gates in the wall were opened to let the person on the horse in.
The town was in a bad way as the wells had been drying up and the surrounding farmlands were barren as well. Vegetable gardens had withered, the piggery abandoned and supplies were low as there had not been any deliveries to the town for quite a while.
Granger had discovered the town over twenty years previously and he ran it with a group of other old men. The stranger was a woman, a woman who had been to the town before and was thought to have been dead. She warned that what was coming could not be stopped by walls, saying “reckoning is on its way”.
Sixteen year-old Chelsea, who is Granger’s current girlfriend, was fascinated by the stranger who had a long white scar from her eye to her chin. Granger protected Chelsea from the savageness of the town but she could see that this woman, with a gun on one hip and a whip on the other, was without fear and could stand up for herself.
Kathryn Hore, an Australian writer of speculative and twisting fiction actually wrote this book before the Covid pandemic. Inspired by watching the Spaghetti Westerns with her father on weekends and holidays, she fell in love with enigmatic protagonists with ambiguous morals and dubious agendas.
The Stranger subverts the Western genre by honouring the knowledge and strengths of the women of the town, strengths overlooked by those who rule by fear and brute strength. The compelling narrative takes the reader on a journey that is full of twists and turns as Hore rewrites the revenge into a satisfying feminist tale.
Lezly Herbert
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