For years before she wrote The Vaster Wilds, Groff had been troubled by an article in Smithsonian magazine about cannibalism at Jamestown, then had the idea to write a “female Robinson Crusoe” who gets away and must survive the mid-Atlantic winter.
Three-time National Book Award finalist Groff’s latest novel is narrated by Zed, a young servant girl who slips through the palisade wall of Jamestown and escapes from the colonial settlement during the “starving time” of 1609. For years before she wrote The Vaster Wilds, Groff had been troubled by an article in Smithsonian magazine about cannibalism at Jamestown, then had the idea to write a “female Robinson Crusoe” who gets away and must survive the mid-Atlantic winter. Robinson Crusoe, of course, is the protagonist of Daniel Defoe’s eponymous 1719 adventure story about a castaway who must hunt and gather while marooned alone on a desert island. (He encounters a few cannibals, too.) Both books are set in vivid natural worlds and explore the search for spirituality outside society, but—spoiler alert—they have very different endings.