In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country [Paperback]

Kim Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1997

Poet Kim Barnes grew up in northern Idaho, in the isolated camps where her father worked as a logger and her mother made a modest but comfortable 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-1960's, as automation and a declining economy drove more and more loggers out of the wilderness and into despair, Kim's father dug in and determined to stay. It was then the family turned fervently toward Pentecostalism. It was then things changed.

In the Wilderness is the poet's own account of a journey toward adulthood against an interior landscape every bit as awesome, as beautiful, and as fraught with hidden peril as the great forest itself. It is a story of how both faith and geography can shape the heart and soul, and of the uncharted territory we all must enter to face our demons. Above all, it is the clear-eyed and moving account of a young woman's coming of terms with her family, her homeland, her spirituality, and herself.

In presenting Kim Barnes the 1995 PENJerard Fund Award for a work-in-progress by an emerging female writer, the panel of judges wrote that "In the Wilderness is far more than a personal memoir," adding that it stands "almost as a cautionary example of the power of good prose to distinguish whatever it touches." Indeed, In the Wilderness is an extraordinary work, courageous, candid, and exquisitely written.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the mid-1960s, as mechanization and the forests' depletion drove many loggers into the cities,Kim Barnes's parents turned to fundamentalism to sustain their increasingly difficult life. The author struggled to live by this religion's exacting tenets, but her chilling descriptions of the harsh punishments meted out for lapses make us understand why she ultimately had to leave it behind. Yet she conveys understanding and love for the rigid yet secure world of her youth in this haunting memoir of faith and loss in the Idaho woods.

From Publishers Weekly

Barnes here recalls growing up in the '70s as a child in a born-again religious family and her struggles between her faith and her need for acceptance by her more worldly classmates. Her father was a logger in the Idaho lumber camps, and her earliest memories were of family joy in the forests. But a different kind of wilderness soon enveloped them when her father lost his job and they moved to town, where he worked as a trucker, joined the Pentecostal church and was transformed into a withdrawn, authoritarian figure whose faith required the subservience of his wife and two children. Barnes was an exemplary child until she was 12, when, jealous of the liberties her classmates enjoyed, she entered a secret life of rebellion: questioning her faith's tenets of salvation and damnation, of male authority and female submissiveness; tempted by vanity; confused by her burgeoning sexuality. Her parents discovered her plan to run away and sent her to live with friends whose kindness helped her recapture her faith and return to her family?though not without unresolved conflicts. Nonjudgmental and generous, Barnes's portrait of her parents, the fundamentalist milieu and her own spiritual questing is deeply moving. (May) in progress by an emerging female writer.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books Trade Pbk. Ed edition (February 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385478216
• ISBN-13: 978-0385478212
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #200,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tender, honest, captivating memoir, May 10, 2000

By 

william woolum - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country (Paperback)

Reaching into her family's history, narrating how her mother and father came to move to Pierce, ID, Kim Barnes begins a most tender, generous, and honest memoir. In part, it's a story about Clearwater County, Idaho in the late 1950's and on into the 1960's. It is as if the world of beat poetry, the space program, and campus unrest hardly existed. In the wilderness near Pierce, Idaho, life still has a settlement feel.

I can attest to the accuracy of Barnes' portrayal. My mother taught school in nearby Weippe, Idaho in the early 1950's and her family still lives in Clearwater County seat, Orofino. We used to take drives up to Weippe, Pierce, and Headquarters and these towns seemed both barely settled and unsettled. It didn't seem anyone was going to stay long.

For me, the most compelling dimension of Barnes' memoir was her family's Pentecostal Christian worship and practice. Told with probing compassion, Barnes lyrically describes how the cartography of her mind as a girl was drawn by the fundamentalism and moral restrictions of Pentecostalism.

As this exploration deepened, and as Barnes describes her family moving to Lewiston, ID and herself becoming a teenager, my respect for Barnes blossomed. Given Barnes' rebellion against Pentecostalism, she easily could have demeaned her parents' Pentecostal practice. But, she does just the opposite. Yes, she chronicles her confusion, the tug-of-war in her soul as she rejects, accepts, and rejects again the comforts and constraints of this kind of church, but she also explores her respect for her parents, how much she is indebted to them for her openness to the transcendent (especially in nature), to the mysterious in life. For not turning her memoir into a reactionary bashing of Christian fundamentalism and for candidly exploring how she could leave home, but home never left her, I deeply admire Kim Barnes. For the beauty of her language, I praise her. I could not put this book down. Nor could I stop reading this book's sequel, Hungry for the World, which I've also reveiwed.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Little House on the Prairie meets Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, December 29, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: In The Wilderness (Hardcover)

That Kim Barnes is a poet is clear from her prose: the sensory details of "In the Wilderness" transport the reader not just to Central Idaho in the 1960s and 70s, but inside the skin of a girl living there.

The book functions on several levels. It elaborates the beauty and danger of living in the wilderness. It documents the erosion of that wilderness, from the perspective of someone who originated there. It investigates the comfort and terror fundamentalist Christian theology can inspire. And it tells the story of girl finding her place within and without her family.

I haven't read Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books in more than 20 years, but the first part of "In the Wilderness" brought back the sense of adventure I felt reading them as a child. "In the Wilderness", however, is written for adults. The last part of the book includes reflection on the significance of events in Barnes' childhood and the roles those events played in making her the woman she's become.

Like Annie Dillard, Barnes interweaves religion and nature. If you enjoyed "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" you'll find something to like in this book--just don't expect "An American Childhood."

"In the Wilderness" has a lot to say about nature, family, and religion, but not at the expense of telling a story. I was surprised at some of the turns the story took because Barnes is careful to present each part of the story from the age perspective appropriate for who she was at that point in the narrative. I read the whole thing in less than two days.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and True, May 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country (Paperback)

The reviewer from Lewiston, Idaho, Kim Barnes' home town, wants to suggest that there are things in IN THE WILDERNESS that didn't happen. What I can't figure out is how anyone could know that. The book is a memoir. It is told from the point of view of the writer, and Barnes early on tells us that she understands the faultiness of memory. How did this person manage to get inside the author's head?

Answer: she/he didn't. Read the book and see. This is a book that bends over backwards to be fair and honest and true. The Lewiston reviewer's motives have more to do with something else--spite, maybe, or jealousy, who knows? IN THE WILDERNESS is a book that changes readers' lives. It's filled with the kind of grace we should all be envious of. It never, ever means to hurt, but to speak clearly and beautifully and, most of all, honestly. The same cannot be said of many books, nor of some reviews.