Sarah O'Connor

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“But the pain of losing a loved one never goes away. It remains deep in one’s soul, like a chronic illness that flares up at intervals. There are good days and bad days,” (Florence).

Molly Bannister is a single mother with a four-year-old daughter in desperate need of medical treatment. She needs a miracle after losing her job, and it arrives in her great-aunt’s will. The sole heir to her Great-Aunt Mary’s remote farmhouse in northern Alberta, Molly knows that she can make some money off the farmland, but the will states that she can only sell the farm after she has lived their for one year. Determined, Molly and her young daughter move from Arizona to Wildwood where they must learn basic homesteading skills, learn how to survive the brutal Canadian weather, and protect themselves from grizzly bears. On top of that, a neighbouring farmer seems to have plans to steal Wildwood from her. Reading her great-aunt’s journal for guidance, Molly is determined to stay the year to improve her and her daughter’s lives.

This is my first Elinor Florence book and so I have to ask, does she hate Americans? I know there’s a lot going on between Canada and the States right now so it’s definitely understandable and I don’t really blame her, but in this book it’s clear she must think they’re at least stupid. I also have to wonder if it was the suggestion from Florence’s publisher to have the book written in a way to really show American readers how different Canada is from the States because they would not be able to search it themselves. After doing some research, Florence is a Canadian writer and Wildwood was originally published by an independent Canadian publisher, Dundurn Press (2018), and has been republished this year (2026) by Simon and Schuster. I’ve become so fixated on this topic that I’ve search original reviews and have put a hold on an original copy of the book to compare these changes, because let me tell you that this Canadian reader found Wildwood a frustrating read.

I understand the appeal of a story with a single mother and a troubled young daughter willing to do anything for her child, but there just wasn’t much going for the story. Molly comes off as an idiot, her daughter Bridget has a very serious, awful, debilitating medical condition that is almost laughable in it’s reveal (SPOILER she has selective mutism), the story is incredibly predictable, and how Molly parents her four-year-old is another bizarre thing. At one point in the book Molly and Bridget see deer outside their house and Bridget asks what the animals are and Molly tells her they are like Bambi, to which Bridget replies, “I thought Bambi was just a cartoon…You never told me deers were real people.” And later when she and Bridget happen upon a beaver dam, Bridget asks her mom, “What’s a beaver?” Like girl, what are you doing to your child that she doesn’t know what a deer or beaver are?!

There are no real stakes in the novel, Molly and Bridget handle all the cruelties that Canada throws at them with relative ease, and a bizarre sort of romance sort of not plot that you might see in an Amish romance shows up without any real emotional attachment or care. The book starts with a prologue that is then told verbatim in Chapter 9 until it reaches it’s resolution at the end of the chapter, which is a bizarre way to include a Prologue. Why have it at all when it happens so early in the story? There is also an Indigenous character and mention that before Molly moved from Arizona from Alberta she did research and learned about the residential school system. Why did Molly do that and not learn anything else about Canada?!

Reading this book made me so angry and disappointed after all the hype I’ve heard from Elinor Florence. I have no interest in reading another book by her, though I understand the appeal that her work might have to some readers. I became so annoyed while reading Wildwood that I screenshotted all the parts that pissed me off, and now I share them eagerly with you. I cannot share page numbers because NetGalley pages are strange, but I hope you understand my thoughts a little more after reading these:

• “It’s a scorcher, eh?”
• “I converted Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head–twice, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Seveny-three degrees Fahrenheit did not a hot day make, but we were in the far north now…I saw several people in shorts and tank tops. Bridget and I were wearing jeans and jackets.”
• “The room seemed unnaturally hushed. Breakfast at an American restaurant was a noisy affair, but here everyone was speaking in low voices…”
• “Canada used the metric system, and I would just have to get used to it.”
• “…it led to the Indian reservation, or reserve, as they called it here. Not only was that word different…I had to remember not to call them Indians. Apparently, they didn’t like being called Indians, and who could blame them, really. Here they were called Indigenous peoples.”
• “Walking along the aisle with frozen desserts, I noticed there was little choice. The supermarkets in Phoenix had aisles the length of football fields devoted to all manner of frozen pies and cakes. Here the choice was limited to ice cream and Popsicles.”
• “I paid for my purchases with bills in all the colours of the rainbow. At least it wouldn’t be hard to keep the different denominations straight here…since the bills looked like Monopoly money. For change, I received silver coins with gold centres, called toonies, each worth two dollars; and golden coins worth one dollar each that looked like they came from a pirate ship. These were called loonies, because they bore an engraving of a loon.”
• “‘Canadian Tire’ sounded to me like an automotive shop, but to my surprise I found it was an all-purpose general store.”
• A talk about guns in Canada:
  • [ “After searching the aisles at Canadian Tire, I stopped a young man in a scarlet vest and asked where the guns were kept.
  • “‘You mean hunting rifles?” he asked. “We don’t carry them here.”
  • ‘”No, I mean a handgun.'”
  • He looked puzzled. “‘Ma’am, where are you from?'”
  • “‘Arizona.'”
  • “‘I guess you don’t know that people aren’t allowed to own handguns in this country.'”
  • “‘You mean, never?'” I was surprised. “‘Aren’t there any exceptions?'”
  • “‘Nope. Not unless you want to join the local Rod and Gun Club and use it for target practice. Why do you want one, anyways?'”
  • “‘For self-defence.” He stared at me blankly. “‘You know, in case somebody tries to rob me.'”
  • “‘We haven’t had an armed robbery around here since before I was born.'”
  • “‘But how do people protect themselves?'”
  • “‘Don’t worry, you got nothing to be scared about. Up here animals are the biggest problem, not people.'”
  • He walked away, shaking his head. As we left the store, I saw him talking to one of the cashiers and pointing at me. Both of them were laughing.” ]
• “The next day, I drained my third cup of coffee with relish. I was practically addicted to coffee, and this was the best I had ever tasted, better than any of the expensive brews served in Scottsdale. I’d bought some Tim Hortons coffee, named after a famous Canadian hockey player,”
• Don’t forget, it’s cold in Canada:
  • [“Minus forty. Dear Lord. Nobody in Arizona wanted global warming, but I could see why it would be welcome up here in the north.
  • “‘That’s not including wind chill, a course.'”
  • “‘Wind chill? What’s that?'”]
• A fun Thanksgiving reminder:
  • ‘”Oh, we almost forgot. Mrs. McKay wants you and your little girl to come over for Thanksgiving dinner. She knows you don’t have a phone, so she asked us to invite you.'”
  • “‘Thank you, that would be very nice.'” I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
  • ‘”Two weeks from today. Come early, because she wants to eat at four.'”
  • I must have looked puzzled.
  • “‘Canadian Thanksgiving is the second weekend in October…It’s because our growing season is shorter. Harvest is usually finished by the end of September. But a course we have just as much to be thankful for as the Americans, if not more.'”
• “Under the robe was a cream-coloured woolen blanket with four broad stripes across one end, in green, red, yellow, and dark blue. A tiny red-and-white label in one corner bore a fabric crest marked HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY.”
• “There were unfamiliar Canadian magazines called Maclean’s and Chatelaine.”
• “The most unusual item was a woolen hood called a balaclava, designed to cover her little face with holes for eyes and mouth.”
• “Then she gave me another warm woolen hat called a toque, plus a knitted tube that went around my neck called a neck warmer.”
• “She had the short grey hair typical of Canadian farm wives, but it was beautifully cut and styled.”
• “…Eileen introduced me to her husband, Cliff, a Canadian and hopefully non-smoking version of the Marlboro man.”
• “I wasn’t sure if this was the famous Canadian reserve, but I was thankful for it.”
• “But this guy was so rugged, he probably drank beer for breakfast and spent his weekends watching football. Or hockey, more likely.”
• “…and thankfully the measurements were Imperial, not metric, one advantage of using a cookbook that pre-dated the metric system in Canada.”
• “…it was minus twenty degrees Celsius, or four degrees below zero Fahrenheit.”
• “I donned my coat and boots and gloves and scarf and hat — marvelling at the amount of time spent getting dressed and undressed in this climate…”
• “‘Curling? Oh, you mean that game that looks like shuffleboard on ice.'”
• “The sun rose and set so quickly now that it looked like a loonie tossed from one horizon to the other by an unseen hand.”
• “The thermometer outside the back door read minus forty Celsius, the same as minus forty on the Fahrenheit scale.”
• “I ordered an extra large double-double for myself and a maple-glazed doughnut and a container of chocolate milk for Bridget.”
• “I checked the thermometer and was surprised to see it was only fifteen degrees Celsius, or fifty-nine Fahrenheit. That would be considered downright chilly in Arizona, but here it felt blessedly mild.”
• And last but not least, something no Canadian would ever ask an American but Americans might (would) ask Canadians:
  • “‘Forgive me for asking, but I thought I detected a bit of an American accent there. Just when you said ‘abaout’ instead of ‘about.'”

Publication: April 28 2026 (February 24 2018)
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Pages: 400 pages (NetGalley)
Source: NetGalley
Genre: Fiction, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤
Summary:

Broke and desperate, Molly Bannister accepts the ironclad condition laid down in her great-aunt’s will: to receive her inheritance, Molly must spend one year in an abandoned, off-the-grid farmhouse in the remote backwoods of northern Alberta. If she does, she will be able to sell the farm and fund her four-year-old daughter’s badly needed medical treatment.

With grim determination, Molly teaches herself basic homesteading skills. But her greatest perils come from the brutal wilderness itself, from blizzards to grizzly bears. Will she and her child survive the savage winter? Will she outsmart the idealist young farmer who would thwart her plan to sell the farm? Not only their financial future, but their very lives are at stake. Only the journal written by Molly’s courageous great-aunt, the land’s original homesteader, inspires her to struggle on.