Jean Hegland
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Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.Nell and Eva live alone in the forest. Recently orphaned and completely isolated, they struggle for normality in a post-holocaust world where electricity is a thing of the past and the outside world a distant memory. In one short year, thie normal teenage lives have been transformed as everything we consider necessary to civilization crumbles. Without petrol or electricity they are forced into seclusion, and adolescent dreams of ballet school and Harvard are displaced by the reality of learning to survive. Nell and Eva wait for the power to come back and the world they understand to return, but as time goes on they are forced to realize that 'civilization' is perhaps nothing more than a temporary condition, a 'fugue state' the world has allowed us. At once a poignant and lyrical portrayal of the power of sisterly loyalty and a horrifying cautionary tale about the future of man and his place in the world, INTO THE FOREST is a deeply moving account of human nature and our fragile existence on earth.
