A Woman in the Wild

A Woman in the Wild is a revealing and memorable portrait of a woman boldly facing her demons in pursuit of a meaningful life.
   
   A psychologist in crisis leaves her established practice in the city for an open-ended retreat in the mountains at the Institute for Healing and Transformation. Feeling lost, betrayed, and stricken by guilt not to have saved her daughter from sexual abuse, she hopes to ease her pain and uncertainties.
   Soon after her arrival, a “wild” man who roamed the forest with a bear is brought to the institute. When the man is given to her care, she performs a suspenseful balancing as she seeks to heal him as well as herself.
   Hiking and meditating each day, she initiates an inner journey that shakes her free from the familiar. As the months pass, she engages her guilt and sorrow, confronts her failures, weighs the limits of therapy and self-forgiveness, and seeks to unleash the healing powers of the unconscious and of love.
   Readers will find this an absorbing and dramatic novel of abuse, resilience, and the quest for transformation.
   
   Excerpt from Chapter 1:
   
   The wild man didn’t speak. Whether he refused to speak or had lost the ability to shape words into sound, no one knew.
   After the media uproar—the hyperbolic newspaper stories and earnest journalists on the evening news describing him as dangerous as a beast—it was a miracle that he was saved from the wilderness alive.
   Thea Firth watched the interview with the hunter again and again. A strapping man with peppered hair close-cropped, he sat with a scoped rifle across his lap.
   “I saw the opening to the cave,” he said, choosing his words with care. “I wanted to go in but something, a sixth sense maybe, warned me not to. I stayed at the entrance and slowly moved my rifle barrel across the interior. It took time for my eyes to adjust to the light, so I didn’t see him until I brought the rifle back across the cave. Filthy, naked, crouching in the darkness, he didn’t look like a man. He was emaciated, starving maybe, but alert like a wild animal. I was afraid he might rush at me. I kept my eyes from meeting his. Acting as if I hadn’t seen anything, I backed away. I could barely keep myself from running. I’ll never forget those eyes.”
   
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