Wild Life
   Molly Gloss
  2000 Simon & Schuster, NY USA
   ISBN: 0684867982


Early in the 1900s Charlotte Bridger Drummond, a thoroughly modern woman, a writer of popular women's adventures, sets out with a search party to rescue a lost child in the wilderness between Oregon & Washington.

In the beginning Wild Life is written in a dense & informative narrative style, reminiscent of the literature of that era & Molly Gloss has captured the transformation of a self-assured pioneer woman, confident in her knowledge of the local flora & fauna, until she becomes separated from the search party.

Because I live among the canyons, gorges & sunless depths of this region, this literate & contemplative adventure means much to me for I have often pondered on how I would survive were I cast into this wildness & had to make my way home. Nowadays, of course, it is not that far from some logging camp or other, however, back a hundred years ago, when the first growth forest stood untrameled & undisturbed, with trees so tall & thick that sunlight rarely entered & where deciduous trees grew, the underbrush so dense as to be impassable. Human habitation then was far & few between.

Wild Life changes then to short entries of despair & longer ones when the observer, the scientist in Charlotte overtakes the pampered housewife. Wild Life is both a joy & a labor; it has been an age since I've read such a rich read. About as long since I gorged on a Jane Austen or an English trifle or a rack of lamb.

When Charlotte, weak from hunger & loneliness, wanders into the territory of band of elusive, seemingly human creatures & is accepted as part of their extended family, she must re-think her modern, patronizing opinion of wild animals & learn the secrets to a contented life.

Then the unthinkable happens: a battle between modern men with rifles & the wild creatures she has befriended & suddenly all the layers of that revered civilization are peeled away.

My favorite Librarian Cheryl recounted her enthusiasm & enjoyment of this book which she had set aside, just because she was sure I'd like it. She was right, what a remarkably absorbing, thought-provoking & endearing read!

More from Molly Gloss: The Dazzle of Day & The Jump-Off Creek.
(02/18/01)

Rebecca