What Wild Women Do by Karma Brown
CBC Books | Posted: June 27, 2023 7:51 PM | Last Updated: January 5, 2024
Set in an abandoned camp in the Adirondacks, the novel follows two women from different times
Rowan is stuck. Her dreams of becoming a screenwriter are stalled, along with her bank account, as she and her fiancé Seth try to make sense of what's next for them after leaving LA. But when the couple takes a trip to a cabin in the Adirondacks, hoping the change will provide inspiration for Seth's novel-in-progress, Rowan finds herself drawn into a story greater than her own—that of socialite-turned-feminist-crusader Eddie Calloway, who vanished one day in 1975 and was never found or heard from again. In a handbook left behind in the abandoned ruins of a once great camp, Rowan starts to discover clues to what happened to Eddie.
As Rowan delves deeper into the mystery, we meet Eddie herself, a fierce and loving woman whose greatest wish was to host women at her camp and unlock their "wildness." However, Eddie's wild ways aren't welcomed by everyone, and rifts between camp owners threaten her mission. When Rowan gets closer to the truth of Eddie's disappearance, she realizes that it may hold the key to unlocking her own ambition and future. (From Viking)
Karma Brown is a novelist and journalist from Ontario. She's written five other novels, including the #1 international bestseller Recipe for a Perfect Wife and has been featured in SELF, Redbook, Today's Parent, Best Health, Canadian Living, Chatelaine and other magazines.
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Why Karma Brown wrote What Wild Women Do
"Midlife is this strange time, not just for women, but I did focus on women for this book. You're raising children, you have aging parents and you have been doing the same sorts of things for some time. And then once your kids gain independence or you get a little more freedom back in your own life there's this question of 'what now?'
I do think that [with] women it's almost like the more age experience we get, the older we get, the more we're ignored or dismissed for that experience. - Karma Brown
"Is there supposed to be something more if I'm at this halfway point and I have this runway ahead of me do I want to keep doing this Groundhog Day type of thing until the end? I don't want to do that, I'm endlessly looking at what are the things that I'm curious about and interested in and how can I shift to be able to explore those if I'm ready to take that opportunity."