Half Wild

In MacArthur's polished debut, the women generally want up from the backwoods, even if their mothers have settled in and the men around them cling to forest and field from conviction or perhaps stasis and fear. Angel, who both loves and hates her hard-drinking mother, sees the fields stretching outward and thinks of walking. Katie, whose mom dreamed of being a poet in college but can't persuade her husband to bring in electricity, is just starting to rebel. After miscarriages and a wild affair with her husband's best friend, Maggie really does leave. So does Sally, saddened that her shiny new ways irritate her father and that she'll lose his "wild and unsettling hunger to go deeper, and deeper yet into the heart of the woods." But things don't get too sentimental; Cora is aghast at her sweet grandson's easy racism.