When the Community finally reaches the Lower Post, there are no Rangers nor instructions. When Carl, the group’s de facto leader, shares her bed, she is comforted and starts to develop feelings for him. At times, she feels like an outsider in the Community.
This tension forces her to self-reflect on motherhood and its incompatibility with her desire to be untethered and to instill self-sufficient autonomy in her daughter.
The day after her death, a Ranger tells them they must immediately begin a long and largely unknown trek to the Lower Post to receive new instructions.ĭuring their Big Walk across uncharted land, Bea begins to struggle to understand her growing daughter. The Community is now only twelve people, which dwindles to eleven when Caroline dies trying to traverse a river. Agnes, now almost nine years old, has grown up in the Wilderness, leading her to develop animalistic characteristics and a free spirit like her mother. The novel’s chronological plot begins four years into the study with Bea, who gives birth to stillborn named Madeline. They become accustomed to death, hunger, and discomfort to the point that they do not give it a second thought. In the beginning, they do not know how to protect themselves against the elements and wild animals they live amidst, and so they suffer many losses. The group of twenty, called the Community, is delusional about the dangers of their new reality, preparing pancakes on their first morning instead of rationing their supplies. Their instructions are to leave a minimal footprint, subject to medical exams, follow the rules of the Manual-enforced by the Rangers-and never stay in one place too long.
They are three of a group of twenty who are granted permission by the Administration to form a nomadic tribe of hunters and gatherers in the Wilderness. Glen, Bea’s kind and loyal boyfriend, is the architect of the Wilderness study and convinces her to participate. HarperCollins, 2020.Ĭook tells her story largely chronologically, dividing the tale of a 15-year study of how humans survive in the Wilderness, the world’s only remaining natural environment, into seven titled sections, which she calls “Parts.” The novel’s protagonists are Bea and her daughter Agnes a third-person narrator focuses on Bea for the first half of the novel and Agnes for the second half.īefore the novel begins, the novel’s bold and brash heroine Beatrice is faced with a difficult choice: stay in the City whose polluted air is killing her five-year-old daughter Agnes, or risk both their lives by embarking on an endless walk through an unforgiving wilderness. The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Cook, Diane.
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