From time to time, the Community visit a “Post” (there are a number of these in the Wilderness), where they collect mail and receive directions from the Rangers, authority figures who enforce the rules and impose penalties for violations (conduct in the Wilderness is governed by a set of rules laid out in the “Manual,” the most important of which is “leave no traces”). Cook vividly details the dangers and drudgery of life in the wild and portrays the inevitable power struggles and shifting allegiances among Community members.

Cook describes life in the Wilderness in unvarnished, even brutal terms: as the novel begins, Bea has just given birth unaided to a stillborn baby, cradling the tiny corpse briefly before burying it. In the Wilderness, Agnes, around eight when we meet her, has regained her health and is thriving. Believing her daughter was going to die, Bea signed on to the experiment. A few years earlier, while still in the City, Agnes, then a toddler, developed severe lung disease because of poor air quality. The cast of characters is sizable, but Cook’s novel focuses primarily on Bea and her daughter Agnes. The members of the Community, who once lived in the City-a crowded, hostile, toxic, glass-and-concrete environment-have been allowed in, giving up contact with civil society to participate in an experiment intended to study wilderness survival strategies and the impact of human activity on nature.

Previously, access to this “Wilderness State” was forbidden. The action, which takes place over several years, follows a group known as the Community as they pursue a nomadic existence in the only patch of untouched wilderness left on the planet. Diane Cook’s bold dystopian novel, The New Wilderness, posits a dismal future for humanity in a ravaged world.

Diane cook the new wilderness review