Sarah O'Connor

“Maybe this is love, the things we endure for the other, the willingness to face death, to stare it down, and not be afraid,” (Ernshaw 216).

Travis Wren has a gift for finding missing people, all he has to do is touch an object belonging to the missing person and he can get an image of where the person went. When he is hired by the parents of a famous author of dark children’s stories, Maggie St. James, Travis finds himself on the road to a town called Pastoral. A rural community founded in the 1970s, the town itself seems like a thing of legend, but Travis follows the road Maggie took thinking we may find it. Years later Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, finds Travis’ abandoned truck on the border just outside of the community where he himself is not supposed to go in fear of bring the rot, a deadly disease, into the community. But Theo isn’t the only one with secrets, his wife Calla and her blind sister Bee also carry them safely in their hearts, but secrets can only stay hidden for so long.

Okay, fine, this book was recommended to me on Threads by an account that was giving recommendations for favourite TV shows and you can guess what I asked for. No, this book is not like Midnight Mass, but I understand why it was recommended to me, and I did like it even if I had a few gripes with it.

A History of Wild Places is beautifully written. Ernshaw’s prose is gorgeous and even though I had some inklings of where the story was going, I didn’t care. I was so lost in her words that I just wanted to stay in them and let the story unravel itself to me. I think Ernshaw did a great job balancing the perspectives of Theo, Calla, and Bee and making them each different and interesting from one another, though Bee was my favourite. I thought Ernshaw did a great job at sprinkling tension, distrust, and fear around the characters and I loved how little by little all the secrets came apart and were revealed.

That being said, I really don’t understand the mild fantasy aspect of the book. Why did Travis need to be able to have the gift of finding people through their possessions in order to find them? It didn’t change anything about the story, he easily could have just been a very talented private investigator and went in search of Maggie through those means. The only guess I have is that it was to offer some sort of explanation for what was happening in Pastoral, but even that is a stretch.

Still though, A History of Wild Places is a wonderfully written book that will pull readers in to a dark and strange community, eager to unravel their secrets.

Publication: December 7 2021
Publisher: Atria Books
Pages: 354 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5
Summary:

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.
Called “Pastoral,” this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it… he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.
Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.