Caim’s Reviews > The Wilderness > Status Update

“There is no good and evil, only healed and broken,” Conrad, like to say when Nakia was growing up. It was his way of priming her to forgive, to build instead of burn bridges. But this is generosity, this grace, could it be extended to machines?

Whew! For these two pages alone (247-248) warrants a reread! Goodness! I feel dizzy with symbolism, cadence, lyrics and longing.

“Her mind had not fully caught up to the rest of what was happening. Of being a protester, somehow an agitator, of being at the whim of giant anonymous Robo trucks, of being trapped, a fatal distance above hard , unforgiving concrete. She had never thought it practical to put her body on the line for someone else’s.”

Oh, wow… I didn’t expect this to be the cause of Nakia’s demise.

“Even now, with her job, with her girls, with Warren and the church to bolster her, there were night she felt like every edifice she’d propped up to separate her from the elements, the wind blasted outside of aloneness, could crumble, and she’d have nothing but her own uncovered self to brace against it. it might not take much for her to end up in the wilderness once again.

“She was only now beginning to understand how much Sherelle’s death had left her feeling exposed. She had been thrust into the wilderness of adult life, frog march into a deep, hard to navigate forest of decisions and failure, and hurt, sheltered by Nolan in name only.”

This portion of the book is extremely poetic. I wonder will the author ever write simply how Nakia died…

“Adults like to knowingly, treat you any kind of way and only get contrite about it when you said enough is enough.”

“But was it a grudge if the other person had earned it, or when she simply needed some time to warm up to them again? She could forgive easily enough, but it took time for her to forget. Motherhood had required her to let all kinds of slides and minor humiliations roll off her back—when it came to the girls. Adults were different.“

“A time capsule of wild hope, almost painful to look back on now.”

YUP.