"This haunting, multi-generational novel simmers with mystery, secrets, a spirit of self-determination and sobering truths about domestic violence."
At once enchanting and arresting, Inga Vesper’s This Wild, Wild Country is a thought-provoking feat of fiction. Through the stories of a business-woman working in New Mexico in the 1930s, through to her granddaughter in the 1970s, it’s a stirring story that unpacks male domination through three inspirational women seeking self-determination and the truth behind a decades-old disappearance.
It’s 1933 and single-minded Cornelia Stover lives in Boldville, New Mexico, a small, isolated town populated by small-minded folk who judge everything about her. In the 1970s, Joanna, a former cop flees an abusive marriage and arrives in Boldville. Instead of finding a place of sanctuary, she walks headlong into a murder cover-up in a commune, and meets Glitter, Cornelia’s hippy granddaughter.
The multi-narrative structure is brilliantly, smoothly done, and the writing is electric as Joanna and Glitter uncover the darkest of truths about Boldville, and what happened to Glitter’s grandmother. With roots to the Gold Rush, this hooked-from-the-opening paragraph novel is gorgeously atmospheric, and 100% immersive.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Other Genres: |
Three women. An isolated town. A decades-old mystery.
They hate me down there, in Boldville. I can read it in their eyes, smell it on their noxious breaths. That dreaded little town hates everything about me: not just my personality and form, the clothes I wear, but the way I think.
The things that I know.
1933. Cornelia Stover is headstrong and business-minded - not the kind of woman the men of Boldville, New Mexico, expect her to be. Then she stumbles upon a secret hidden out in the hills . . .
1970. Decades later, Joanna Riley, a former cop, packs up her car in the middle of the night and drives west, fleeing an abusive marriage and a life she can no longer bear. Eventually, she runs out of gas and finds herself in Boldville, a sleepy desert town in the foothills of the Gila Mountains.
Joanna was looking for somewhere to retreat, to hide, but something is off about this place. In a commune on the outskirts a young man has been found dead and Joanna knows a cover up when she sees it. Soon, she and Glitter, a young, disaffected hippie, find themselves caught up in a dark mystery that goes to the very heart of Boldville, where for too long people have kept their eyes shut and turned their heads away. A mystery that leads them all the way back to the unexplained disappearance of Glitter's grandmother Cornelia forty years before . . .
A captivating, atmospheric new novel from the lauded author of The Long, Long Afternoon, This Wild Wild Country simmers with secrets, lies and terrible betrayal, unravelling the lives of three women at the mercy of their times.
This Wild, Wild Country features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, Crime and Mystery, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, General Fiction
This Wild, Wild Country is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook
This Wild, Wild Country was written by Inga Vesper and published by Manilla Press an imprint of Bonnier Books Ltd
This Wild, Wild Country has 399 pages
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