I’ve wanted to read Melissa Ostrom’s ‘The Beloved Wild‘ for sometime now. I finally got to read it today.
It is around the year 1810. Harriet is a seventeen year old girl. She lives in a farm with her parents and siblings. Life is filled with farming tasks and routines which are beautiful but hardwork and which keep changing across the seasons. Harriet’s favourite sibling is her brother Gideon. They have been best friends since the time they were kids. Harriet’s neighbour Daniel Long courts her, but Harriet is ambivalent about it. This is the situation, when one day Gideon tells her that he is planning to leave the family farm and become a pioneer and buy forest land and try his luck as a farmer there. Harriet is upset with this revelation. Then after giving some thought to it, she decides that she’d like to accompany Gideon. Whether these two are able to proceed with that plan and what happens after that, and the adventures and experiences they have form the rest of the story.
I loved the way the story brings alive life on the farm during the early 1800s. How the tasks are hard and physically tiring, how people manage it in pleasurable ways – all this is beautifully described. While reading the book, we are transported to that era and we feel that we are in the farm with Harriet watching her and her family performing different tasks which keep the farm running. Melissa Ostrom’s research into that period must have been extensive and it shows in the wonderful details that are captured in the book. I loved this part of the book very much.
The second part of the book which describes the life of a pioneer is very interesting, because it is not at all like how it is depicted in a movie. Being a pioneer and going into the forest and making a life there is hard. The document one has might say that one owns 200 acres of land, but cutting down trees and making a clearing, building a house, clearing some land for farming, and trying to sell the farm produce in a far off town is lots of hardwork. Many people might lose their way, get frustrated, get depressed, get drunk. Pioneering is not for the faint-hearted. This book depicts all that very realistically.
I loved most of the major characters. Harriet, our narrator, is cool and sassy, and makes us smile in the way she takes on people. Her friend Rachel is fascinating too. There is one scene in which Harriet and Rachel are picking apples and they start singing songs together and they discover that their singing goes beautifully well together – that was one of my favourite scenes in the book. Daniel Long, who courts Harriet, looks like the American Darcy. But he is nicer. There is a character called Phineas who comes in the second part of the book who is cool and stylish and talkative. The scene in which Phineas is introduced was one of my favourite scenes in the book. Phineas has a sister Marian, who is a totally kick-ass character, whom I loved very much.
Towards the end of the book, Harriet says this –
“How silly I used to be … so anxious to toss aside childhood and move on with life. But I was learning something today, a lesson murky and bitter. Liberating feats, daring adventures — accruing such experiences wasn’t the essence of maturity. In fact, growing older seemed less about getting things and more about losing them, less about realizing dreams and more about feeling wakeful and alone. Maybe adulthood wasn’t really a matter of age at all. Maybe it happened whenever a person at last saw human nature for what it was, for the shape it could take, from the depravity of one to the mettle of another. Well, I supposed I was good and grown now. I still held the image of my girlhood in my mind’s eye but could find no way back into the frame. I didn’t belong in the picture.”
It was beautiful and profound and moved me and also made me sad. It was one of my favourite passages from the book.
I enjoyed reading ‘The Beloved Wild‘ and I was sad to leave Harriet and her friends when the story ended. I wish there is a sequel in which they come back and I can find out what adventures they had later.
Have you read ‘The Beloved Wild‘? What do you think about it?
Vishy's Blog 
There’s a fair bit of “Pioneer Lit” in Australia, some of it written within living memory of those days, and some of it historical fiction. The difference between the two is that the former rarely makes mention of the prior inhabitants who were dispossessed, and the latter, if it’s any good, weaves them into the story.
I think a lot of people like it because they test themselves against the hardships. (This is why WW2 stories are still so popular.) What would I have done if I’d lived in those days? Would I have been tough enough?
Thanks for telling me about Australian Pioneer Lit, Lisa. Would love to read them sometime. It is sad that the dispossessed are left out from the books. It looks like we have to read the books with that in mind, that it is not the complete story, and is probably one perspective on things. But I think that the hardship that the pioneers went through and how they faced adversity and how they handled it must be interesting and inspiring to read.
I agree, I don’t think that we should stop reading books because they present a flawed view of history. It’s up to us to get informed about these things and read in between the lines.
Totally agree, Lisa. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😊