Genre - Historical & Contemporary Fiction

The kids from Lisa Wingate’s upcoming novel Shelterwood could (probably should) break our hearts. Set in Oklahoma, Wingate maintains two timelines. In 1909 Olive and Nessa are on the run from the man who has drugged their mother and molested their sister. Olive will demand a different life moving forward - if she can just get back to her childhood home in the mountains. The struggle to stay ahead of the evil ones, to earn money, to eat - banding with other lost kids and trying to survive is suspensefully portrayed. In 1990, park ranger Valerie Borden-Odell is assigned to the same Oklahoma wilderness. She is contending with a devastating burial site with three sets of bones, a missing teenage boy and his missing grandmother, and a mystery in the woods that is endangering her officers. The presence of Kate Barnard, Oklahoma’s first elected female official - Oklahoma Commissioner of Charities and Corrections - looms large in life in 1909 and in spirit in 1990. She worked for the children - pushing for child labor laws and for the property rights of native children and more. I have been reading of the lives of historical women lately who have often been overlooked. This book fits right in.

Wingate expertly weaves these two stories together using alternating chapters throughout the novel. Each chapter leaves us with a question to take to the next - so well done. The whole time I read, I was trying to make the right connections. The parallel elements are simultaneously delightful and devastating. In each timeline older women are working against very difficult odds to protect younger kids. The title Shelterwood echoes this motif in such a lovely way as they are described as older, taller trees who protect younger ones. Again and again the idea of the older generations working to protect the younger ones - and most often women - surface. Valerie thanks her mother and grandmothers for their influence in one beautiful passage. One of the main characters from 1909 who is an elderly woman in 1990 speaks of the dreams of children and how those dreams thrived in the shadows of the trees and were fulfilled in spite of all of the opposition. The timelines are united, and the throughline here is just so beautiful.

As so often happens these days, I am left wondering if I am doing enough in the world - to leave it better than I found it. Wingate raises so many issues - the treatment of indigenous people in our country, the treatment of orphans in general, the treatment of women, the flaws in the foster system, the need to preserve nature, trees, our environment from greed without being didactic. While we see improvements from 1909 to 1990, we can also see how much work is left to be done. Most will agree that much work remains in 2024. I have more time than many to figure out how to contribute to that work. I also like the starting over motifs. Olive is starting over again - a child responsible for other children. Again and again she is betrayed by adults in her world, but she forges ahead because she must. Valerie is starting over - really for the second time in her new job and as a single parent - who wants her son to grow up with the freedom to be exactly who he is. Time and again she could make choices to make her life easier. She doesn’t do so. She chooses the freedom to be herself. These women are strong. I have worked to be so; as time marches forward, and as I’m starting over a bit, may I continue. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.