LONE WOMEN, by Victor LaValleVictor LaValle’s enthralling fifth novel, “Lone Women,” opens like a true western, with a scene of dark, bloody upheaval and a hint of vengeance. When we meet Adelaide Henry, the grown daughter of Black farmers, she is in a daze, dumping gasoline all over her family’s farmhouse. We don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing, what happened to her family or, most important, what else she has or hasn’t done. Adelaide will soon escape to the harsh beauty of Montana as one of the “lone” women acquiring a homestead of 320 acres from the federal government. If she can survive three years there, cultivating the land and making it habitable, the land will become hers.

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