Title: In the Wilderness
First published: 1996
Description: Poet Kim Barnes grew up in Northern Idaho, in the isolated camps where her father worked as a logger and her mother made a home for her husband and two children. Their lives were short on material wealth, but long on the riches of family and friendship, and the great sheltering power of the wilderness. But in the mid-1960s, as automation and a declining economy drove more and more loggers out of the wilderness and into despair, Kim's father dug in, determined to stay.

It was then the family turned fervently toward Pentecostalism. It was then things changed.

. In the Wilderness is the story of this poet's journey toward adulthood, set against an interior landscape every bit as awesome, as wondrous, and as fraught with hidden peril as the great Idaho forest itself. It is an examination of how both geography and faith can shape the heart and soul, and of the uncharted territory we must all enter to face our own demons. It is the clear-eyed and deeply moving story of a young woman's coming to terms with her family, her homeland, her spirituality, and herself.
Subjects: 20th century, American Poets, Childhood and youth, Family, Family relationships, Homes and haunts, Intellectual life, Pentecostalism, Poets, American, Religious life and customs, Social life and customs, Wilderness areas, American Women poets, Families, Nature study
Places: Idaho
People: Kim Barnes
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3552.A6815 Z467 1996