The New Wilderness Summary
Diane Cook

The New Wilderness Overview

Set in the not-so-distant future, Diane Cook’s debut novel The New Wilderness is an environmental dystopia that captivates like a campfire horror story, following the tracks of protagonists Bea and her daughter Agnes as they struggle to survive in the world’s only remaining wilderness. Bea, Agnes, and 17 others escape the toxic air of the City to partake in a survival experiment that studies how humans interact with nature in the Wilderness State, a land patrolled by the Rangers whose enforce the minimization of the human footprint on the last remaining piece of the natural world. In addition to addressing the larger complex relationships between humans, animals, and nature, Cook’s primary thematic focus is on womanhood and the relationship between mothers and daughters.