A blend of myth and feminist awakening, Atwell sets her tale in remote Appalachia, where the stories of killer wild girls are part of local lore, bands of young women who break with tradition to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting. Kate Riordan is one of these potential females, raised in Swan River, but given an opportunity through her mother's employment to attend Swan River Academy, where the daughters of the wealthy matriculate, avoiding the public high school. Kate is attracted to red-haired Willow Becker, a young woman with little regard for the feelings of others. Though aware of Willow's shortcomings, Kate is impressed by her fearlessness. In the snobbish academy environment, the myth of the wild girls assumes a romantic aura, stripped of the true venality of such attacks, reimagined as a secret cult of females calling forth magical powers.
Absent the harsh reality of poverty endemic to the area, where the future holds no promise for those enduring chronic economic devastation, the idea of a cult of wild girls flourishes among the elite daughters at the academy, dangerous borders crossed by intellectual dilettantes with little appreciation for consequences. In the world Kate has grown up in, her home replicates a dying environment with little opportunity and no hope. Nurturing a secret crush on handsome Mason Lemons, whose sister is a wild girl and mother reads the future, Kate stands by as Willow purposefully seduces the attractive boy from the wrong side of the tracks, unable to claim him herself. While Mason's friend, Clancy Harp, waits for Kate to notice him, she is caught up in the drama created by Willow and Mason, the third member of their dysfunctional triangle. Atwell's plot is constructed around Kate's two realities, life as she knows it- including belief in the wild girls- and the conceits of the wealthy females who play with the power and romance of the concept and imagines they might confiscate what cannot be theirs.
The author makes no attempt to justify the murderous activities of the real wild girls, to explain the phenomenon or the lack of consequences, save Kate's fear of becoming one herself. Myth and magic are used in equal measure, a detour into fantasy that clashes with the rationality of the story. The abrupt plunge into non-reality and the chaos that ensues create a jarring reentry into normalcy after the damage is done, as though life-changing events have not just ravaged the academy and the community. Mixing a doomed romance with out-of-body experiences and a collection of corpses doesn't jell, unless the possible and impossible are immaterial. The undertone of female awakening throughout Wild Girls is clear, unfortunately twisted into unrecognizable form through the violence and destruction that is the antithesis of female empowerment. Luan Gaines/2012.
