A History Of Wild Places

“Perhaps we are like two old people who have lived together too long, a lifetime, a hundred years or more. The cobwebs of tiny mistruths, little papercut deceptions, rooted in our joints and slung between rib bones. We’ve built ourselves on these microscopic lies, so small we can’t recall what they were. But they’re all the same, binding us to one another. But also ripping us apart.”

Ernshaw’s description of tiny deceits implies that it is a collection of small lies, rather than large ones, that do the most damage over time. The imagery is primarily tactile, with the idea of cobwebs and papercuts located deeply within the body. Ernshaw thus emphasizes the theme of the Insidious Nature of Deceit.

“If you turn north, the road takes you into the heart of Pastoral, dead-ending at a small parking area where two dozen cars sit rusted and pillaged, weeds growing up around their flattened tires, some with hoods propped up, their parts stripped clean, others are missing doors. Even an old school bus sits on its rims: the same bus that the founders drove into these woods and never drove back out. It’s a cemetery of bent metal and steering wheels and spark plugs long corroded. Mementoes of old lives.”

Ernshaw provides vivid imagery of the run-down vehicles using a complex, run-on sentence. The syntax reflects the jumbled items present in the scene. Ernshaw also uses metaphor and polysyndeton—multiple coordinating conjunctions—in the final two sentences to emphasize the long, implicit history of the parking lot.

“To imagine him stepping over the boundary, his heart beating in his chest, lungs gulping in the night air, forces a spike of nausea into my stomach. I can’t even walk within a few feet of the boundary without fear rapping at my rib cage: a dark hole of unease widening inside me. We have been taught to fear the trees, but this fear feels as if it were born inside me, taken root long before the first stories of an illness began sweeping through the community. I fear what lies beyond our boundary as though it already lives within my dreams, always there, trying to draw me out into the dark.”

Ernshaw emphasizes intimacy between Theo and Calla through the visceral descriptions of physical reactions. This indicates Calla’s empathy for her husband despite her horror at what he has done. She also considers the contrast between inherent and learned fear, which is an important subtheme throughout the novel.

“He pulls apart the threads of my mind that keep me tied together. My bones become heavy like river stones. My eyes flutter closed, and I hear a change in the air, like the ice splintering along the edge of the pond in winter, thin and delicate. I am the ice: sharp, deadly. I will break if Levi isn’t careful. I will slice him open if my edges are exposed.”

This passage foreshadows important aspects of the plot and Bee’s character development. The imagery of Levi pulling apart the threads of her mind suggests what will eventually be revealed about him hypnotizing members of the community. The contrast suggested between ice as delicate or deadly mirrors Bee’s character trajectory of finding her own strength. Finally, her suggestion of metaphorically slicing him open foreshadows the fact that she will eventually stab him.

“And in that silence, in the waiting, an old feeling begins to prick at me: that thorny, too-tight sensation of being caged, stuck inside Pastoral, a gnawing beneath my shoulder blades that has only worsened over the years. Some mornings, when the air is calm and milky, I think I can hear the ocean a hundred or so miles away to the west, and I feel the pressing urge to reach a hand through the border trees and touch the foaming sea with my flattened palms. […] I long to sleepwalk through the trees and let my legs carry me somewhere in the distance—a needle-sharp desire that has rested inside me my whole life. I want to leave this place.”

Due to Bee’s apparent blindness, chapters from her perspective often include extensive sensory details. Here, Ernshaw uses diction to emphasize how Bee experiences the abstract feeling of entrapment physically, including words like “prick,” “gnawing,” and “pressing.” Bee’s disability means she is trapped within Pastoral and unable to leave on her own, but her acceptance that the community is a cage implies that she sees the truth with more clarity than those around her.

“One last goodbye. I trace a line up his throat to his chin, feeling the small scar cut vertically into his flesh. Most don’t know it’s there, but I do. When we were eleven, we climbed one of the hazelnut trees beyond the pond, and a branch broke beneath him and he fell to the ground, cutting his chin on a limb. I remember how frightened I was—in my child-mind, I was certain he was dead. I scrambled down the tree and pressed a thumb to the cut, absorbing his blood. He smiled up at me, and I knew he was still alive—I knew he meant more to me than anything else, and I couldn’t lose him.”

In this final goodbye after Levi tells Bee he is marrying someone else, she recalls the moment she knew how much he meant to her. The specific detail of their gestures—her pressing her thumb to his cut and his smile—indicates the power of memory and how it sustains her love for him. Her desire to help him contrasts with her eventual decision to kill him, and the violent nature of the memory mirrors the fraught dynamic they have overall.

“He nods like he understands, but his eyes stare into the trees, over our border, and for a moment his expression is stark and pale in the moonlight, inhuman almost. A man with too many things secreted away inside him, things he won’t let me see. And for the first time, I think perhaps I don’t know him at all: this man I married, who lies beside me each night smelling of the forest, our breathing taking on the same sleepy rhythm, who sometimes looks at me as if he doesn’t know me either. As if I’m a moving puppet with disjointed arms and legs, words muttered from my wooden mouth.”

Ernshaw emphasizes the contrast between intimacy and deceit in this passage. Calla thinks of Theo as “inhuman” but recalls intimate details of lying beside him, including his smell and their similar breathing. The simile of Calla as a puppet wife parallels this internal juxtaposition between their humanity and the falsehood of their lives, foreshadowing the reveal that Levi has been implanting false memories to control them.

“The white farmhouse with its mockingbird-gray shutters and tall, crumbling chimney, looks like a ghost ship set adrift among a sea of shadowed summer grass. A place where people wait out bad storms, protected from an illness they don’t quite understand.”

Ernshaw combines several opposing concepts in this imagery: the countryside, man-made architecture, and the sea. This alludes to the conflict between what Pastoral is and what it should be. Ernshaw emphasizes the theme of The Ideal Versus Reality of Off-Grid Existence through the fact that Pastoral represents both protection and stagnation with the imagery of the crumbling chimney and ghost ship.

“The ground aches beneath me, twigs snap, leaves fall in slow measure—lazy and truant—followed by the faint preternatural hiss of trees cracking apart, limbs opening up, and disease spilling out.”

Ernshaw represents Bee’s closeness with nature as she lies on the ground alongside her fear of the supposedly diseased trees. Ernshaw anthropomorphizes the ground and leaves by describing them as aching, “lazy,” and “truant,” offering an almost human connection between Bee and the world around her. The trees’ diseased contents, waiting to be released, echo the fearful truth hiding within the residents of Pastoral.

“They fear something in the woods, the notebook reads. Herbs tied with string hang from the trees, marking the boundary they do not cross. I’m starting to question whether it was a mistake coming here without notifying someone. I skim through the notes quickly to where they stop—only half the notebook filled. But there are also missing pages, ripped out near the end. His last notation at the bottom of a page is carefully written, not in haste. I found her. Maggie St. James is here.”

In addition to the excerpts from Maggie St. James’s novel, pages from Travis’s notebook provide a source of written material outside of the novel’s prose. The inclusion of other written artifacts contributes to the novel’s sense of mystery and foreboding, as well as alluding to themes regarding the impact of stories. The description of herbs tied to trees emphasizes the symbolic meaning of trees as a literal and metaphorical boundary within the novel and refers to subthemes of cult and superstition.

“The fox had lied to Eloise before. Leading her to the plain ordinary places within the forest. This time she knew it would lead her somewhere else, somewhere new—it would take her to the underground museum, the place where all forgotten artifacts were kept. She followed it to a stone well in a high meadow near the sea. And when it leapt over the edge and down into the deep, hollow well, Eloise did the same.”

Like Travis’s notebook pages, excerpts from Maggie St. James’s fiction prompt a shift in the novel’s ominous tone and increase the sense of mystery. The fox’s lie functions as a symbol of Levi’s hypnosis of members of the community. Meanwhile, the underground museum represents the truth that the main characters are seeking, where the memories of their past lives are stored.

“I dream the world is made of watercolors, sad and dripping, melting in the summer heat. In my dream, my eyes can still see, and when I look upon Levi standing in the meadow beside the pond, he is fanged and wild-eyed, with lies spitting from the tip of his tongue. In my dream, he is the thing I fear.”

Bee’s dream echoes the imagery in the Eloise book excerpts through the use of descriptions like “fanged” and “wild-eyed.” It likens him to the character of the fox and foreshadows how he has been lying to members of the community about the “pox.”

“What we’ve built here suddenly terrifies me.”

This short sentence is an emphatic end to the chapter, as Calla begins to experience a shift from fearing the disease to fearing the community itself. An important element of her character trajectory is her growing sense of complicity in the community’s collective actions. “What we’ve built” implies agency and blame that transcends an initial, basic interpretation of Levi as the antagonist, reframing the entire community as contributors to Pastoral’s failures.

“‘It’s been many years since anyone has left our borders,’ Levi begins. He doesn’t know how wrong he is. ‘And many years since we’ve had to perform the ritual.’ I hate how it feels, listening to the oration of his words, the swooping cadence of each vowel. It makes me feel weak, my eyes heavy in a way that’s hard to explain, like I could slip back into the gravity of his arms and believe anything he said. I could fall in love all over again.”

This passage includes vivid sensory description of the aural qualities of Levi’s hypnosis. The use of assonance in Bee’s internal monologue imitates the alluring quality of his manipulation. Bee associating his influence over her with her love for him obscures the eventual twist that he is hypnotizing members of the community. Ernshaw therefore provides clues for the eventual revelation while maintaining mystery and building suspense.

“But she spins around before entering our bedroom. ‘I don’t know why you’re not sick and neither is Bee. But those two men, they caught it while trying to help—it doesn’t make sense.’ Her eyes flicker with something—a strange kind of uncertainty I don’t usually see in my wife. Like an oversized thought is pressing against her windpipe, and it’s only growing larger.”

This passage is important to both Theo and Calla’s character development. Both are experiencing a growing level of suspicion regarding Levi and the community. The description of her “oversized” thought “pressing against her windpipe” implies the visceral, physical effect of this drastic change in what they believe about themselves and their community.

“I don’t answer him, instead my ears absorb the sound of his heart beating heavily in his chest, the rapid thud, the booze swimming through him and making his skin radiate heat. He walks to me, careful and slow, and my own heart claws against my ribs—betraying me, wanting to reach out and touch the surface of his flesh, to stand up and kiss him. But I don’t allow myself to do this stupid thing.”

Ernshaw creates an ominous sense of intimacy through Bee’s sensory experience of being near a drunk Levi. She experiences lust, but the passage’s diction implies its false nature, particularly in words like “claws” and “betraying.” These unsettling moments of physical intimacy contrast the more positive examples shown between Theo and Calla, who—while they distrust each other at times—are still earnest in their feelings for one another.

“I let myself love him one last time, against his bedroom door, against the soft cotton of his summer-white sheets. And for a moment, I think I can see the ceiling, the tiny blue floral pattern of the wallpaper. I think I see the window, looking out at the tall pines. I think I see Levi’s face: the lines around his too-green eyes, the perfect structure of his nose and jaw, the form of his lips as they trace along my collarbone. For the briefest moment, I can see again. And it terrifies me.”

The inclusion of details of the domestic interiors in this passage suggests the contrast between the benefits of the community’s traditional life and its darker nature. The repetition of “I think” syntactically represents Bee’s self-doubt as her vision briefly returns, but she is distrustful of what she sees. It also implies that these affectionate thoughts aren’t entirely real; they are idealized versions of what Bee wants her life to be.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I unclasp the hook and place the delicate chain around my neck, securing it there. My reflection in the mirror feels instantly like someone else: dead eyes staring back, a woman who isn’t in the right skin. My fingers trail across the chain, observing the way it lays over my collarbone, a comfortable weight.”

The charm necklace is a symbol of the past life Maggie St. James has lost. Calla’s feelings upon wearing the necklace suggest the contrast in her identity: She sees herself as not being in the right skin but notes that the necklace feels right. It foreshadows the reveal that Calla is Maggie St. James. Using “chain” and “weight” also contrasts with the delicacy of the necklace and implies the heft of the memories that Calla has left behind.

“I need to wash myself clean: The creases of my skin are caked with soil and prairie grass and tiny wildflowers pressed flat; they form a new landscape of my body. A restlessness is building inside me, a bewildering need I wish I could scrub away, but pain like this doesn’t wash off. I need nails and wire. I need a knife—like the one resting on the bathroom counter beside the sink.”

Dirt is a symbol throughout the novel for the connection to earth and a disconnect from society. In this passage, the suggestion of Bee’s body as a landscape suggests that she is becoming one with Pastoral but feels the need to rebel against this process. The reference to the knife foreshadows how Bee will eventually stab Levi.

“But now I see: these were the imaginings of a teenage girl, a girl who fell in love with Levi in a meadow buzzing with fattened honeybees, wildflower fluff drifting lazily through the warm breeze, cool blades of grass poking up between my toes. I fell in love with him easily, and now I have allowed him to break me.”

Levi and Bee’s relationship mirrors the novel’s theme of The Ideal Versus Reality of Off-Grid Existence. Ernshaw highlights the complexity of the pastoral lifestyle by emphasizing communing with nature as a benefit and the disconnect from society as a potential pitfall. Additionally, this passage includes vivid imagery of the landscape’s beauty with phrasing like “wildflower fluff.” The delicate descriptions recall the original luster of her relationship with Levi, and the sharp turn in diction when she notes that he broke her parallels the unpleasant reality of her current situation.

“And then my gaze falters, skips to a book I remember like a spark across my synapses: the book Levi started reading once he abandoned simple card tricks and the magic of making dandelions and hair ribbons disappear. The book he would read with furious intensity. He would even recite passages to me, as if he were devouring each word and he wanted me to devour them too. He wanted to see if he could do it, if he could really make someone see, hear, smell things that weren’t truly there. If he could make them forget […] Hypnosis and Practical Applications to Alter the Function of the Brain by Dr. Arthur Trembly.”

Ernshaw produces suspense through the process by which Bee realizes Levi has been hypnotizing members of the community. On a macro level, characters slowly begin to doubt Levi, first becoming more aware of his stress and “burden” and eventually beginning to mistrust him. On a micro level, this passage follows the same progression: It builds suspense as Bee first sees the books, then remembers Levi reading a particular one, then recalls its full title.Ernshaw produces suspense through the process by which Bee realizes Levi has been hypnotizing members of the community. On a macro level, characters slowly begin to doubt Levi, first becoming more aware of his stress and “burden” and eventually beginning to mistrust him. On a micro level, this passage follows the same progression: It builds suspense as Bee first sees the books, then remembers Levi reading a particular one, then recalls its full title.

“The sky turns pewter, watery-gray, and a new certainty settles in my bones: I will raise my daughter within this forest, bright-eyed and wild-hearted. She will march unafraid beyond borders, and into dark feral lands. I will teach her how to swim in the pond beyond the farmhouse, just as I did, to harvest lemons and hazelnuts, and to sleep under the stars when the nights are warm and quiet. And when I touch the bridge of her freckled nose, the shell-shape of her tiny ears, I won’t think of him. Because she will be all mine.”

In this passage, Ernshaw creates a climactic moment for Bee as she reclaims her daughter as purely her own rather than shared with Levi. She similarly reclaims the landscape and her memories of it. Bee resolves the novel’s theme of The Ideal Versus Reality of Off-Grid Existence for herself by determining that her daughter will have communion with nature but will not be afraid of the outside world and will “march unafraid beyond borders.”

“She also finally gave the child a name: Clover Clementine Rose. A Pastoral name—a good name.”

Ernshaw establishes a double meaning in this passage. The name Clover Clementine Rose is both a Pastoral name in the sense that it reflects the ideals of the community and a pastoral name in its relation to the natural world. It shows how despite Colette’s escape from the community, she is still influenced by the values she developed within it.