The Rewilding by Donna M Cameron
“The instant he ruins his life a vision of his mother explodes in his head.”
The Rewilding (2024, Transit Lounge) is a cli-fi chase thriller by Australian author Donna M Cameron that follows our protagonist on the run, Jagger Eckerman, who meets environmental activist Nia. It is a story of hope, environmental justice, conservation, grief and family, all wrapped up in cat-and-mouse story set in a post-covid Australia. This book is enjoyable if you like thrillers, nature and stories about relationships with a hint of romance.
The story begins in Sydney as our protagonist, Jagger, finds out he’s been betrayed by his fiancée, Lola. Lola is a social media influencer and started dating him as part of an elaborate gold-digging plan she and her mother came up with. Within twenty-four hours of his discovery, he also realises that he is being used as a scapegoat for illegal goings-on at his father’s company. His response is an awakening of conscience: he drops off blankets across the city to homeless people, sells his car, blows the whistle on his father’s company and shady manager Ed, his direct superior, and runs.
Right off the bat, you’re immersed in a fast and well-paced story. Each of the initial chapters ends on a cliff-hanger. The tension builds and unfolds as Cameron slowly reveals more of Jaggers’ past as he hides from the people out to get him for his indiscretions.
We learn that Jagger is a child of divorce, and that his mother nurtured his love for the environment when he was young. His best friend Will, who was abandoned by his own family for being gay, is the brother he never had. Jagger’s mother was soft, whereas his father was tough and patriarchal, a man who started out working class and became a corrupt construction mogul. Jagger was swayed from the empathetic nature-loving life he lived with his mother to gain his father’s approval, and to meet the whims and fancies of his blonde bombshell girlfriend Lola.
We see Jagger, now on the run, start to find his way and be the man his late mother raised him to be. He sees her everywhere – in plants and flowers and even skinks when he hides out in a national park just outside of the city.
“She is everywhere here, hiding in the street signs, the trees, the sea birds, the wet dogs shaking in the sun, and all those little gestures that let him know how much he was loved.”
The story is filled with vivid and tactile descriptions of the natural world. When Jagger seeks refuge in a nature reserve by the beach, he meets Nia: a woman and climate activist that he mistakes for a Huldra when he first encounters her. His mother had told him about Huldras as a child: a forest spirit of Scandinavian folklore who appears to be a beautiful woman from the front, but her back is hollow, and she has a tail.
Nia and Jagger’s relationship is fraught with tension, though they eventually reach an understanding and become unlikely allies. In exchange for payment, Nia agrees to drive Jagger across the border to Queensland so he can try and escape the country, the henchmen that are after him, and the authorities now that he’s a wanted person.
Both characters are also grieving throughout the story. Jagger is grieving his mother and his relationship with Will by telling Nia stories about them. Nia is grieving an ex-lover through notes, letters, diary entries we are privy to in between chapters. Their grief is something they both have in common.
“I know there'll come a day when I'll stop crying, when my heart will be scarred like the chiselled sandstone I've seen here - a convict wall of blood gone cold. Until then I write through damp blotches, creating smudges of memories of you and the lost beauty of our world.”
The core message of the book is hope, centred around what can be done in the face of man-made climate change. Nia sees the planet’s future as a lost cause despite risking her own body and safety to protest fracking and large corporations. Jagger, whose conscience is only just awakening, tries to tell her about the positive progress towards a greener future. On their journey they visit self-sufficient communes filled with Nia’s comrades. Jagger, despite being ecologically minded, can't understand their doomsayer extremism about climate change. Still on the run and close to Queensland, the news of his ‘wanted’ status is overshadowed by a cyclone that wipes out the Gold Coast as we know it. It is a sign from nature as to what the pressing issues actually are.
The book was well-paced and gripping, though I wish the momentum of the first few chapters was carried through the story, before it returned to its intriguing and adventurous ending. It was quite a journey that transforms both Nia and Jagger, their relationship to the world around them, and each other. You will enjoy this if you liked Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (2023) or The Great Undoing (2024) by Sharlene Allsopp.
Kanika is an avid reader and sometimes writer and curator. She is the creator of literary zine More than Melanin and associate producer for the Emerging Writers’ Festival ‘24. Kanika’s other passions include food and daydreaming.