Michael Ondaatje provides the cover blurb for "The Outlander" and, now that I'm almost finished and am about to write my review for the Star Tribune, I can see why the author of "The English Patient" and "Anil's Ghost" would rave so about fellow Canadian Adamson: "The Outlander" is wordy, dreamy, occasionally overheated and concerned with madness, the enduring intimacy created from sexual relations and adults longing for childhood.

In short, if you like Ondaatje, you'll like "The Outlander".

The sprawling Canadian wilderness of a hundred years ago is as good a place as any to set a story about a woman with a shitty husband who goes apeshit with post-partum psychosis and Adamson has a nice way of making you feel the craziness as well as the eventual climb back to sanity. But how I much I will like this novel will depend on how Adamson concludes the chase by the twin pursuers of justice and karma that are on our heroine's trail. I will be somehow disappointed if it is Ondaatje-style (foregone, tidy, and devastating). I hope the narrative is driving toward something unexpected.

We shall see. Stay tuned.