Wildwood

In her dashing novel *Wildwood* Drucilla Campbell weaves an alluring, highly complex tale of three still-young women who find release from a horrible event shared some 30 years past. During the intervening years they've all lived quite different lives--two have remained close to home, the third has lived abroad--and it is she who returns for a visit and provides the ultimate catalyst for dramatic resolutions.There are many aspects in Ms. Campbell's novel to intrigue us: a curious private school and a tenebrous nature-place of crime are provocative old hometown venues; the maddeningly relentless drought--a seemingly "judgmental" withholding of rain--serves as a puissant metaphor; and then there is the ever-surfacing mystery of a missing piece of intimate clothing, which is a key to their life-changing mystery. And of course there are the relationships between the women themselves--and their men--all inextricably wound together like tangled roots of old trees. These relationships are charged, and psychodynamically layered (especially interesting to me, a NYC psychotherapist), and all are portrayed with marked originality and truly extraordinary perspicacity.On the way, there are delightful tidbits and dividends: a wonderful run through Paris; an engaging ear for the patois of the youth involved; and loads of good southern California.Read *Wildwood*. Read it because it's immensely entertaining; read it because it's incredibly edifying.

My friend brought me this book, said she'd read it all the way through on her flight to see me. I didn't believe her. Then I started reading and found myself unable to stop. I was captivated by all of the characters, saw some of myself in each of the women. I loved that it wasn't predictable, as so many books are now. This is a great book club read - really brings out discussion.

Druscilla Campbell, the author of "Wildwood" did it. She made me care about the three characters and best friends, Hannah, Jeanne, and Liz, when I had enough to care about like my family, a baby on the way, job, etc. She hooked me from tbe first page until the last. Druscilla has an uncanny ability to get inside her characters heads and make them real. More than that, she gives each one of her characters a real and distinct voice; one that leaps out at you from the page. These voices push you along, leading you to the end. A good book makes you examine yourself and those around you. Do I have friends that will last 40 years? Could we endure a similar secret of "Bluegang Creek" like Hannah, Jeanne, and Liz? Not only did I love reading this book, but it got me thinking which is the best kind of book.

Drusilla Campbell has captured the moods and personalities of her three main characters in a way that makes the reader feel that they are all friends. She shows how one traumatic event in their childhood has affected all three of them in different ways as they rejoin each other years later. Her descriptions and insights into people are very apt and fresh. This is a book that you will not want to put down once you begin to read it. I enjoyed it immensely!!!