49 pages • 1 hour read
Shea ErnshawA History Of Wild Places
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Farmhouse”
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Theo”
Theo wakes beside his wife, Calla, after struggling to sleep the previous night. He lies rather than telling her what prevented him from sleeping because she “doesn’t like it when I talk about the outside” (45). He meditates on their love, as well as the lies they tell each other. She tells him she’s planning to meet her sister in the orchard and departs.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “Calla”
Gathering hazelnuts with her blind sister, Bee, Calla expresses her worry about Theo seeming different. Bee reassures her but asks if she thinks Theo wants to leave. Calla tries not to think about that prospect. Rain begins, and they hurry inside, worried that the “rot”—a deeply feared illness in the community—could be transmitted by the rain.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Bee”
Bee meditates on the differences between herself and her sister, Calla. Bee wants to stay out in the rain while Calla wants to run from it, and Bee holds on to memories of their parents while Calla represses them, angry at them for dying young. She goes into an infrequently used area of the house that used to be a sunroom. It housed outsiders who came to Pastoral before it was decided whether they could stay. She notes, though, that it has been “over ten years since anyone new has wandered up the road to Pastoral. And just as long since anyone left” (57). A memory comes over her of a man in the room, though, which feels strange and too recent.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Theo”
While trading shifts at the guard hut, Theo asks a younger man, Parker, how far he has been down the road away from Pastoral. Parker tells a story about chasing his dog down the road past the boundary. After Parker leaves, Theo walks down the road as he has been doing for more than a year, five paces at a time, to see how far from the community he can make it. He goes further this time and discovers Travis’s truck. He goes through it and finds a photo that elicits an instinctual reaction. It is labeled “Maggie St. James.”
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Calla”
Theo returns home with the photograph and admits to Calla where he got it. She is horrified and tempted to run from him, but she stays. He tells her he knows he isn’t sick because he has been doing this for so long. He then says that the truck belonged to Travis Wren, who must have either walked back down the road or come into Pastoral.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Bee”
Bee overhears what Theo tells Calla and thinks about the illness. The disease goes by the names Elm Pox and Rot. It supposedly originates in trees and rots humans from the inside out. Bee is also struck by the name Travis Wren—she’s sure she’s heard it before and thinks he slept in the house recently.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Calla”
Calla thinks about what Theo has done and is surprised that he hasn’t shown symptoms of illness yet. She knows she will protect him rather than tell the others the truth. While bathing in a pond nearby, she sees Theo and Bee talking through the window and senses that they are sharing a secret.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Bee”
Inside, Bee tells Theo that the man whose name he mentioned was in the house. Theo wonders how they could not have known and asks Bee why she told him. She says she knew he would believe her, but Calla wouldn’t, given her reluctance to consider anything outside Pastoral.
Part 2 Analysis
The shift from Travis’s narrative in Part 1 to the alternating first-person perspectives of Theo, Calla, and Bee in Part 2 is abrupt. Ernshaw does not provide context about each individual or their role in Pastoral until those details arise through action. The narrative mirrors the disorienting experience of arriving in Pastoral. The narrative shift also echoes the sudden change between society and the isolated community. Ernshaw characterizes each person through how they experience the world around them, from their own perspective, as opposed to using third-person descriptors. The use of multiple first-person perspectives has two effects. First, it facilitates the novel’s experiential quality and its twist. Because none of the three protagonists know what is going on in Pastoral, discoveries and clues are made known only when individual characters discover them. This enhances the sense of mystery and complicates the plot. Second, it creates a choral voice in which several characters are equally important to the narrative’s progression. This enhances the novel’s emphasis on community and the positive and negative effects of communal living on individuals’ mindsets. Ernshaw therefore uses the novel’s perspective to explore the theme of the Ideal Versus Reality of Off-Grid Existence.
Ernshaw creates both contrasts and commonalities through the different perspectives. Each character has a distinct voice, and Ernshaw gradually characterizes their different ways of viewing the world. However, consistency is created between them in the prose as Ernshaw includes patterns in phrasing that repeat from one chapter to the next despite the shifting perspective. For example, the first “Theo” chapter ends with the statement, “My wife is a liar” (47); the following “Calla” chapter begins with the sentence, “My sister is a nocturnal creature” (49); and the subsequent “Bee” chapter opens with “My sister is afraid of the dark” (55). In this, Ernshaw uses prose to suggest similar ways of thinking and speaking among members of a community, particularly between family members.
In this section of the novel, Ernshaw also introduces the theme of The Insidious Nature of Deceit. For example, Theo thinks the following about his wife: “She loves me, I know. But she’s also keeping something from me—secrets under her fingernails. Deceit in the creases of her eyelids. My wife is a liar” (47). This passage implies the intimate nature of deceit in a romantic partnership. Ernshaw particularly emphasizes the contrast between marriage and deceit in the short, emphatic final sentence, paralleling two concepts that usually carry opposing connotations: “wife” and “liar.” Through the inclusion of physical details, Ernshaw also confuses the lines between the concepts’ stereotypically positive and negative roles, uniting unassuming bodily details like fingernails and eyelid creases—things only a partner or other close acquaintance might see regularly—with the concept of lies and disconnect. This adds an element of unreliability to each character’s perspective, adding to the novel’s overall sense of mystery.
