![]() The push-pull of ambivalent but powerful love between mother and daughter centers the novel. As she tells the grown-ups, “follow the animals.” The viewpoint shifts over time from prickly, tormented Bea, whose romantic loyalties are unclear but whose motherly protectiveness is fiercely all-consuming, to Agnes, who grows up in a world where natural order trumps human-made rules. Bea misses aspects of her urban life, however difficult it was, but her powers of psychological observation make her “good at this survival thing.” Agnes, whose “health cratered” from breathing City air-the reason Bea joined the study-is now vitally healthy, with a natural instinct for primitive skills. ![]() They live according to the Manual, watched over from afar by the Rangers who make sure everyone follows the Manual’s rules. ![]() ![]() Members carry their few possessions on their backs and eat what they can forage and kill by hand or bow, leaving no human traces in their wake. In a dystopian future, a woman and her daughter leave behind the increasingly unlivable conditions of the all-consuming City, where most of the population is trapped, to join a survival study in the Wilderness State.Īs part of the study, Bea and Agnes have been members of the Community since it began when Agnes was a “frail, failing little girl.” The Community, originally 20 adults and children before various births and deaths, travels the wild as a ragtag pack, rife with typical internal politics. ![]()
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