The White (Alfred A. Knopf)
"Ms. Larsen has written a novel that is ferocious in its depiction of the savagery visited by Indians and whites upon each other and lyrical in its evocation of the Allegheny Valley world that Mary [Jemison] comes to love, a novel that leaves us with an indelible portrait of a remarkable woman and the tumultuous times she lived in."
... a brutal and beautiful novel."
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
" …hypnotic… rich and rewarding… The reader finds something close to the actual in Mary's story… and with Larsen's wonderful assistance gratefully reimagining the world of the old frontier, that border between the First Americans and the people we have become. Other writers have tried this before, but I don't know any who have done it so gracefully and at the same time so forcefully. Here is the old world of the New World, both a dream and our shared history, for our reading pleasure and our thoughtful consideration of what we all have lost and gained."
–Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle
"[B]oth a stirring adventure tale... and a lyrical meditation on one woman’s coming of age... Larsen’s perfect prose captures both the brutality and unexpected beauty of Mary’s life... For all its frontier romance... a stubbornly unvarnished tale."
–Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[C]urious and fascinating . . . a saga of hardship and casual tragedy with brilliant moments of joy."
–The Washington Post Book World
"Illuminated by a wonderful sense of detail and natural rhythm, of landscape, body, and the shifts and changes of time."
"A brave... stark, snowdeep novel."
–Austin-American Statesman