
Literary Fiction · Science Fiction
Into the Forest
Mood
Bleak, Tender
Parental Rating
R
Teenage sisters Nell and Eva live with their father in an isolated house at the edge of a Northern California redwood forest as civilization quietly winds down around them. The electricity fails, gas and groceries vanish, the radio falls silent, and the news offers only rumors of plague and economic collapse before stopping altogether. After their father dies in an accident, the two sisters are left entirely alone, forced to learn how to forage, garden, and survive off the forest while clinging to the routines and ambitions of their old life. Hegland tells the story through Nell's journal, building a slow, interior account of two people holding each other together as the world they knew dissolves.