A History of Wild Places Book Review
Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley, for an advanced digital copy of A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw, which is set to release in the US on December 7th.
““I’ve found it, a community forgotten, hidden for the last fifty years. A myth deep in the woods. Carved into the sign is a word, a welcome for those who have made it this far: Pastoral.””
I don’t read a lot of ARC’s (Advanced Reader Copies). I find that my TBR is already stacked full of books that have been published that I already don’t have enough time to get to. But one day I was nosing around on NetGalley and saw the captivating cover of A History of Wild Places. I loved the ink blots, so I read the synopsis and was immediately drawn in, so I requested it and to my surprise, I got it. It took me about a month or so to pick it up, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down.
It’s difficult to talk about this book without spoiling anything, and I hate spoilers. I usually go into most books without reading the synopsis or without knowing much about them. It’s the way I choose to read and it definitely influences my reviews. My version of the synopsis of A History of Wild Places will be short and very close to what you will find on Goodreads. Mainly because I don’t want to give away too much of this book.
““The mind is a weak, pliable thing, so loose and full of holes, easily manipulated.””
Travis Wren is a detective, of sorts, with an unusual ability to locate missing people. When acclaimed children’s book author of the Eloise and Foxtail series, Maggie St. James goes missing, her parents hire Travis to help find her. On his search to find Maggie, Travis himself mysteriously disappears. After Travis goes missing, we are transported to Pastoral, a remote community deep in the woods. This community was founded in the seventies by a group of people who wanted to live away from the noise of the world around them. The community is a peaceful one where everyone works together and takes care of one another. When we arrive in Pastoral, the community members are bonded together by their fear of Elm Pox, more affectionately know as “the rot,” a disease that seeps from the trees surrounding their community. Fear of catching the rot and dying a painful death after spreading it to the other community members, has made crossing the boundary between Pastoral and the rest of the outside world prohibited. We follow these characters as their lives, their memories, and what they thought they knew begin to unravel before their eyes.
The majority of this book takes place in the extremely rural community of Pastoral, which the author does an incredible job building. Pastoral is exactly what I would expect from a community built by its founders’ own hands in the middle of the woods. Rustic and natural, filled with salt of the Earth type folks who’s way of life is more back to basic than what we’re used to. I felt like I was stumbling around the woods while reading this book.
““But when you become familiar with the dark, with slithering, rotting things, you forget the feeling of sunlight. You forget what you should miss. And then there’s no going back.””
The beginning of A History of Wild Places is told from the perspective of Travis Wren, the man hired to find Maggie St. James. We listen as he tells his story, racked with the numbness that accompanies years of grief. We get glimpses into how he is able to find so many people who have gone missing. After Travis vanishes, we immediately jump to Pastoral and the story shifts to alternating perspectives of Theo and Calla, husband and wife, and Bee, Calla’s sister, all who live in Pastoral. At the beginning of the switch in perspectives, this book felt very disjointed, almost like it was two separate books, but they do eventually find themselves woven together in a satisfying way.
The main characters in this book are:
Travis Wren—a man wracked with guilt after the loss of someone close that he feels he could have prevented. He has special abilities for finding people and is on the hunt for the missing person Maggie St. James.
Calla—Pastoral community member who’s garden supplies the community with herbs needed for healing. She also takes the rules of her community very seriously and and begins to question if her husband Theo is hiding secrets.
Theo—Pastoral community member who’s job is to guard the gate at the road that leads from Pastoral into the outside world. He watches for anyone coming and going and he begins to obsess over what’s out there at the end of the road.
Bee—Calla’s sister and Pastoral community member who went blind as a teenager. Her blindness allows her to use her other senses in a more powerful way. She is also a trusted advisor of Levi, the community’s leader.
The beginning of this book was a bit slow for me. I thought it read like most of the thrillers you see these days and I wasn’t as interested, but as soon as the perspective shifted to being in Pastoral and following the community members there, I was hooked, reading more than half of the book in one single day. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. The author’s writing style is so captivating, often leaving chapters on a cliffhanger, that I needed to know what was going to happen. The chapters were short and that allowed me to use my favorite phrase over and over again. “Just one more chapter.”
““No matter where you go, there are cracks in the plaster, nails coming loose, you just have to decide where you want to piece yourself back together. Where the ground feels sturdiest beneath your feet.”
”
This is usually the part of my review when I tell you what this book made me think of, how it made me feel, what themes I took from this, but I honestly don’t want to say much else about it. As I mentioned earlier, I personally like discovering things about a book along the way. I don’t like when people tell me what to think about a book and I don’t want to plant an idea in your mind that would spoil this book for you. The best part about reading is discovering what you will take from the book, what the book made you think of. I think it’s best if you go into it not knowing anything about it.
I will say that the last 20% of the book was wild. I did expect part of the ending, which didn’t ruin this experience for me. If anything, being right about a particular part of the ending only enhanced my enjoyment. There were other elements to the way this story ends that I truly didn’t see coming.
“The truth has found us, and now it stabs at the backs of our necks, refusing to be ignored.”
I would highly recommend this book if you:
Like psychological thrillers that don’t fit the current mold
Like books that are set in nature
Enjoy reading about communes and they way they function
Don’t mind a book that starts off a bit slow
I would not recommend this book if you:
Aren’t into books that are a bit creepy
Don’t like sticking around for a slow burn
Don’t like books that make you guess what’s going on the entire time
Any book that can keep me hooked, turning pages and ignoring everything around me, is a book that earns 5 stars from me.
