Before razing the house in which they had spent their entire lives and turning to the forest for all their necessities, Nell chooses three books to take with her: Native Plants of Northern California for Eva since it may have already saved her life; a book of stories of those who had lived in the forest for Burl; and the encyclopedia’s index for herself. In choosing the index she says, “I could not save all the stories, could not hope to preserve all the information—that was too vast, too disparate, perhaps even too dangerous. But I could take the encyclopedia’s index, could try to keep that master list of all that had once been made or told or understood.” If you could take only one item from your current existence into the future, and that one item was a book, which one would you choose and why? Why do you think that Hegland would choose to describe the retaining of information as “too dangerous?” What kind of childhood do you think Eva’s baby will have? If technology and society were to return to advanced states, how might the child adapt to leaving the forest?

This is a family history following the Rabinowitz family as they are forced from their home in 1942 into the Nazi ghettos in Poland from which they narrowly escape into the forest where they survive for two years living in bunkers, with little or no food, no medicine to treat the severe typhus outbreaks or any other maladies, no proper clothing especially for the brutal winters until they are liberated in 1944. Into the Forest". TIFF.net. 2015-07-24. Archived from the original on 2016-07-16 . Retrieved 2015-09-19.Un roman poétique, poignant, d’une criante actualité, qui délivre un message essentiel ! Un coup de cœur de cette rentrée.

Most of the people in my book club enjoyed this and it really does come down to personal tastes. Some books are just poorly written but this really is not. For me, the element of gloom felt throughout the book, was simply not for me and the pacing was not to my liking either. At the end of the day, I have read so many books in this genre that I am a bit tired out on it as we ll.The girls live on their own in a cabin in a forest 32 miles from the city of Redwood, California. Their mother died the previous year of cancer, and their father died more recently in an accident while chopping down trees for firewood. To take his mind off the loneliness, the boy’s mother asks him to take a basket of goodies to his grandmother’s house. She tells him to go the long way round to avoid the forest. But the boy plans to ignore this advice for the first time ever, in case his father comes home early. Big Struggle

Eli? You batted your lashes at this boy for a hot minute over a flask in a shady square and all of a sudden you're pining for him? Bish please. He just randomly hikes out to your house? Swipes your v-card and then you continue the dirty but magically don't get pregnant? You're willing to hike across the country for this fool and leave your sister behind all alone? Nell needs a hi-5. In the face. With a chair. I so wish I had been able to enjoy this book and I do feel elements of it were lovely. I actually changed my rating from a two to a three. This is one that just did not work for me at that time.

The book points to a myriad of rules and mores that were broken. The forest would produce its own socio-economic structure that created friendships but also a degree of hostility as the woods created a society of have and have nots. Frankel describes in intimate details how human relationships became tools of survival for women. It was clear to many that the only way a woman might survive was if they had a relationship with a man for protection. If these relationships happened to produce a pregnancy, abortion and allowing babies to die became the norm as any sound, i.e.; a crying baby could give away a position and result in another Nazi Selektion that would massacre the Jews. Frankel delves into the fears, the highs and lows of living in the forest with death facing them each moment, the preparations to fight, and the interactions with others with the result that the reader should develop a high degree of empathy for victims of the Nazi genocide.