The Wildlands

July 1, 2018
Geni's (The Lightkeepers, 2016) fascination with the borders between human and animal drives this distinctive sophomore novel.Darlene, Tucker, Jane, Cora: Already motherless, they are transformed in seconds into modern orphans when a massive tornado sweeps their small piece of the Oklahoma plains, disappearing their childhood home, their barn animals, and their father. More transformations await. Darlene, now a legal guardian, scrapes together a subsistence for the siblings instead of going to college. Their new life is sufficient for Jane and for Cora (whose memories extend no further back than the tornado) but is untenable for Tucker. He runs away to nurse a streak of wildness, becoming a dangerously zealous animal rights activist, returning to bomb a cosmetics factory close to home and releasing the bewildered test animals. And while the tornado is catalytic, catastrophe occurs when Tucker kidnaps 9-year-old Cora. He needs someone to tend his gruesome wounds from the bombing but seemingly desires a spiritual accomplice as well. Cora joins her big brother lovingly and willingly. On the lam, she sees more and more to make her uneasy; bombing is but one of the destructive crimes Tucker is willing to commit in the name of the animals. But Cora is enthralled by the fairy tale Tucker spins around their adventure and confused by the new identity Tucker has given her as a boy named Corey. Back home, Darlene's devastation is palpable, as are her anger, desperation, and strength of will. She and Jane find an ally in a local police officer, but their hope of finding Cora wanes along with the summer. Cora's experience, narrated in first-person chapters, is tender and terrifying. Tucker is almost exclusively viewed through her eyes, but readers can see the abhorrence of his actions clearly. At the same time, Geni uses him to limn the intelligence and order of the animal world and to raise valid, troubling questions about humans' treatment of their fellow beasts. Darlene, an impressive example of grit, provides a counterpoint. The question of the novel is what Cora will become--what any of us could become--when placed in the eyes of that storm.Geni continues to create works of art with perfect voices that are simultaneously thrillers and meditations on nature. It is an incredible trick.

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July 16, 2018
Disasters both natural and personal are at the heart of Geni’s bold and adventurous latest, following 2016’s The Lightkeepers. Three years after a tornado devastates the Oklahoma town of Mercy—leaving sisters Darlene, Jane, and Cora orphaned and in poverty—a nearby cosmetics factory is bombed by animal rights activists. The bombing turns out to be the work of the girls’ disappeared brother, Tucker, who abandoned the sisters after a storm took away their home and father. On the lam and badly injured, Tucker kidnaps nine-year-old Cora to help tend his wounds, and to witness his grand plan of destruction as he moves west and targets individuals and establishments that hurt animals. Cora is struck dumb with love for Tucker, whom she remembers only as a special presence, a remnant of her old life, but through her eyes readers can clearly see the cruelty and confusion behind his escalating actions. With Cora missing, tough Darlene works with a kind local cop to find her sister and end Tucker’s reign of violence before it can hurt too many or corrupt Cora too irreversibly. While predictable, the novel is particularly notable for its interrogations of human relationships with the natural world, in keeping with Geni’s previous works. This is a fast-paced, high-stakes novel that will keep the reader turning the pages.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
Cora's mother died in childbirth; at six she becomes the youngest of four orphans when a massive tornado kills their father and destroys their Oklahoma home. Tucker abandons his sisters and disappears, while Darlene sacrifices her dream of college to support her younger siblings. When Cora is nine, she's alone at their trailer when Tucker reappears, badly injured, and takes her with him on what turns out to be a deadly, cross-country ecoterrorist rampage. Geni (The Lighkeepers?, 2016) extends her signature and deeply unnerving exploration of the permeable line between wildness and civilization in this teeth-gritting tale of a young man broken by grief and rage and a trusting child turned fugitive, a girl disguised as a boy whose identity is scrambled and life endangered. With searing intensity, Geni contrasts Tucker and Cora's grueling misadventures with Darlene's agony as she waits for news and her surprise to find herself in love with an investigating police officer. Geni's masterfully precise and harrowing depictions of emotional and physical suffering culminate in a surreal and catastrophic showdown involving a California zoo. In this staggering tale of loss intimate and ecological, Geni joins T. C. Boyle, Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, and Hannah Tinti in portraying humankind as both the planet's most dangerous predator and one of myriad species vulnerable to ecodisasters of our own unintended devising. Riveting, provocative, and unforgettable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)