Review of Winnemucca by Laura Elliot

Winnemucca by Laura Elliot is a powerful re-telling of one of the most ancient of stories: The journey of a strong girl from adolescence to womanhood in a hard, desolate place. While this story has been told a million times throughout history, Laura Elliot re-frames it not only by placing it in contemporary, western-rural America, but by telling it from the point of view of a girl from a rural population historically ignored. The story is boldly told in poetic prose that I have not seen since the writers of an older age. The tone of the story is set through the voice of the girl runaway before she has realized her own talents, and is spoken with ‘the sound truth makes being said’, as Ray Bradbury once coined the term. Emerging from a sea of derivative and formulaic novels, Winnemucca is a fresh view of a world that is at once savage and beautiful, crushing and hopeful, and above all, reveals the magic of ancient storytelling by bringing our attention back to the little things that matter, and to the shifting nature of perception and reality alike.