Wild Life

　　In her highly original new novel, Molly Gloss delivers a rareblend of "heady cerebral satisfactions, gorgeous prose, andpage-turning adventure" (Karen Joy Fowler). Set among lavasinkholes and logging camps at the fringe of the Northwest frontierin the early 1900s, WILD LIFE charts the life -- both real andimagined -- of the free-thinking, cigar-smoking, trouser-wearingCharlotte Bridger Drummond, who pens popular women's adventurestories. One day, when a little girl gets lost in the woods,Charlotte anxiously joins the search and embarks on an adventureall her own. With great assurance and skill, Molly Gloss quicklytransforms what at first seems to be pitch-perfect historicalfiction into a kind of wild and woolly mystery story, as Charlotteherself becomes lost in the dark and tangled woods and falls intothe company of an elusive band of mountain giants. Putting asurprising and revitalizing feminist spin on the classic legend ofTarzan and other wild-man sagas, Gloss takes us from the wilds ofthe western frontier to the wilds of the human heart. "Never hasthere been a more authentic, persuasive, or moving evocation ofthis elusive legend: WILD LIFE is a masterpiece" (KirkusReviews).