Wild
Wild child
Wild is another tale from the international best-selling author Kristin Hannah. A remarkable story about resilience and human compassion.
Her own early years made Dr Julia Cates an exceptional child psychiatrist; she remembered every nuance of her pain. The odd one out, the geek, always in the shadow of her gregarious larger-than-life family, she’d always felt marginalised, unloved, unimportant. Now her profession has filled the frightened place inside her with joy. She is both accepted and needed.
But her burgeoning career is suddenly and seriously compromised following an incident where one of her long-term patients, Amber Zuniga, kills four children and then takes her own life. For three years Julia had spent two hours a week listening to Amber’s problems, so why hadn’t she recognised the girl was becoming increasingly violent and depressed? The modern world no longer believes in senseless tragedy: someone has to pay, and Julia certainly pays dearly in this case – the press expose her as incompetent; her clients leave her; her confidence is undermined and she’s left alone and aimless.
Then Julia’s sister, Police Chief Ellen Barton, is in serious need of help. Just as a powerful thunderstorm ends, a scrawny, spindly-limbed girl of about 6 with filthy matted hair and eerie blue-green eyes is discovered hiding in a maple tree in the town square of Rain Valley on the edge of a massive but largely-unexplored rain forest, a snarling wolf puppy cradled in her arms. She’s seriously malnourished and dehydrated, with old scars from ligatures round her ankles where she’s been tethered, knife wounds and evidence of whippings. Ellen is under pressure to call in the big guns, but she’s sure she can handle one lost girl – or at least she knows someone who can. Julia.
Julia has specialised in interpersonal dynamics but old personal hostilities and insecurities emerge now she’s back with her sister, and revisiting her childhood haunts. She has a true gift for dealing with traumatised children but she can’t get so much as a word out of this undersized creature who fell out of a tree. Nonetheless she’s intrigued by a child who behaves more like a wild animal than a human, who can communicate with birds and wolves though not with her own species. It’s clear she is locked in a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. It’s undeniably a big challenge, but Julia has the time and the skill, so why not see what she can do to help this little person through her trauma, and discover how to unlock her mind and voice?
Julia becomes the lost child’s official foster parent, and makes her a full time project. She sleeps in the same room as her, spends all day every day with her, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the waif – whom she names Alice – begins to respond to her and to trust her.
Meanwhile Police Chief Ellie is working too to find out the girl’s identity and keep the press engaged with the case. It’s only wide-spread publicity that will give them a chance to find her family and prevent her being taken into the detached care of the authorities. But publicity is not Julia’s friend: the press and public are still baying for her blood because of the case that ended her previous career. It takes enormous courage to put Alice’s need above her own.
It’s a tender story weaving together personal heartbreak and altruistic love. I wasn’t personally persuaded that there needed to be quite so many romantic threads, nor did it seem credible that the child, Alice, would still be using single disjointed words after such intensive therapy, but the flawed characters of the adults gave depth to their backstories and purpose to their actions. An unusual and enjoyable break from the serious study.