THE BELOVED WILD

A vivid, sharply funny and surprising story of adventure and love, The Beloved Wild reminds us that, when it comes to building a life, pants are comfortable, but friends are bedrock.

In the spring of 1807, sixteen-year-old Harriet Winter is exactly the girl everyone expects her to be: the capable eldest daughter in a farming family, soon to be the wife of Daniel Long, a nice-enough neighbor whose initials, whittled on nearly everything he possesses, spell D.U.L.

But Harriet has grown up with one eye on the cemetery, where her mother and grandmother lie, both dead before the age of twenty after giving birth to their daughters. When her brother Gideon confides his plan to leave their beloved farm and strike out for the Genesee Valley, Harriet decides to go with him disguised as a boy.

As "Freddy," a foundling recently escaped from a cruel apprenticeship to an "evil silversmith," Harriet makes her way west by wagon with Gideon while trying to ignore painful thoughts of Daniel, about whom she's lately had second (and third) thoughts, finally arriving at the thick, wet wilderness that Gideon has purchased for his future farm.

And it is here, amid sickness, temptation, unexpected guests, and a never-ending battle to create a clearing in the woods, that Harriet finally understands what it is she really wants, from her life and from herself.

Melissa Ostrom teaches English literature at Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York. Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The Beloved Wild is her YA debut. She lives in Batavia, New York, with her family.