Heart of the Wild is a survival novel, family drama, and coming-of-age story set in 1972 in the mountains of western North Carolina. It follows fourteen-year-old Emma McKinney, her mother Jenny, runaway Becky Ralston, and a watching hawk whose presence turns the forest into something both real and mystical. The book is about what it means to be lost, what it means to be found, and how the wild can terrify, test, and transform a person.
The novel opens with Hawk circling over Nantahala National Forest, watching a lost girl stumble through danger on a mountain called The Mystic. The mountain is shaped like a woman lying on her back, and local legend says that anyone who wanders too far into her heart may never return. Hawk sees the threats Emma cannot yet see: cliffs, snakes, wild dogs, bears, dangerous men, and the landscape itself.
Two weeks earlier, Emma and her mother Jenny drive from Atlanta to the tiny mountain town of Silverveil for the summer. Emma is furious. Her father, Bobby, a Marine pilot, has been missing in action in Vietnam for a year, and Emma has clung to hope that he is alive somewhere in the jungle. She does not want a “fresh start.” She wants home, her best friend Kimmie, the library, her dog Buck, and her father.
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