There is something about the way the plot of this book is described on the inside cover that led me to believe that Wildwood is a survival thriller. It is more of a lighthearted survival story than a thriller. Kind of disappointing, but I still found myself engrossed by this novel for reasons other than plot and character.

Wildwood is set in 2010 and is about an American woman from Arizona named Molly who finds out she has inherited her great-aunt’s off-grid farm in northern Alberta called Wildwood, provided that she lives on the farm for a year. Initially Molly thinks this is crazy provision in her great-aunt’s Will (which it is) and is going to turn down the inheritance, but she has just lost her job and can’t find another one and has a four-year-old daughter to take care of. If she can last one year at the farm, she can sell the property for over a million dollars. So, she decides to take a chance on the northern Canadian wilderness, in winter, and flies to Alberta with her daughter in tow.

Once Molly arrives in Alberta, she meets her great-aunt’s lawyer and is immediately able to see that the guy is a shady character, but she isn’t clever enough to figure out that he is most likely scamming her? Her ignorance in this regard is an obvious plot contrivance to create friction between her and the handsome farmer neighbour who is renting her great-aunt’s land so that readers are hanging on by the seat of their pants wondering if Molly and handsome farmer are going to get together by the end of the novel. Wildwood’s predictable plot prevents this novel from being a great novel. It is seriously low stakes, even with Molly and her four-year-old roughing it in an old house with no electricity, no plumbing and not much food in the middle of a northern prairie winter, eighty kilometers away from the closest town. Sure, they have a couple of harrowing moments, but no one is dying in this novel (the great-aunt doesn’t count because it happens off page).

But what I loved about Wildwood, what sucked me in and had me eagerly turning page after page is the evocative setting. I can close my eyes even now see Wildwood in my mind. I have never wanted to climb into the pages of a novel as much as I do with this one. I long to explore the rooms of Wildwood’s four-square farmhouse, walk amongst the wildflowers growing around the house with my arms wide and hands spread so I could feel the petals tickle my palms, sit by the nearby stream and watch the beavers build their own house, pick wild berries until my hands are sticky and my stomach is full, with only the noise of birdsong and the buzzing of insects as company. Wildwood makes me long for my childhood summers and Christmases spent my own family’s farm (which thankfully had electricity and plumbing), a quiet rural getaway where my sisters and I could run free, entertaining ourselves with our imaginations.

Wildwood is a story about the healing power of the natural environment. Molly goes to Wildwood an uncertain woman, afraid for her and her daughter’s future. Through Wildwood’s isolation, and through reading her homesteader great-aunt’s journal, Molly confronts the traumas of her life and learns that she is more confident and resilient than she could have ever imagined. She also learns to love Wildwood as much as her great-aunt did.

Wildwood is also a devastating reminder of how much we take nature for granted. Oil companies and now AI companies circle farmland like vultures, waiting for their chance to swoop in and destroy the natural beauty of the land just so that we have more gas to burn and more processing power to create ridiculous AI generated photos and videos to post on social media for likes. Wildwood was first published back in 2018 but reading it now amid the AI data centre boom is a tragic reminder of how humanity has turned its back on nature and how fucked we will be when there is no more arable land left to feed us. I want everyone to read this novel and be reminded of how uncomplicated life can feel when it isn’t being crowded by digital noise.