If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. Nature.īea's five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. Margaret Atwood meets Miranda July in this wildly imaginative debut novel of a mother's battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change A prescient and suspenseful book from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Gripping, fierce, terrifying examination of what people are capable of when they want to survive in both the best and worst ways. But at its core, The New Wilderness is really about motherhood, and about the world we make (or unmake) for our children.' - Washington Post 'More than timely, the novel feels timeless, solid, like a forgotten classic recently resurfaced - a brutal, beguiling fairy tale about humanity. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.'-Publisher's description.Ī Washington Post, NPR, and Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year - Shortlisted for the Booker Prize But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter's life means losing her in a different way. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they slowly and painfully learn to survive in an unpredictable, dangerous land, bickering and battling for power and control as they betray and save one another.

Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it.

There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. About the Book 'Bea's five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home.

Diane cook the new wilderness review