Review by Kevin Brown
Angela Flournoy’s first novel, The Turner House, gathered together a family to make sense of a life lived in a particular place and understand how to move forward. Flournoy takes a similar approach in her second novel, The Wilderness, though this work focuses on friendship more than family. Nakia, Desiree, Monique, and January are trying to craft lives and careers as young Black women in America. They each spend time in their particular wilderness, but they all have each other to rely upon when they are at their lowest points.
Lest this description sound saccharine and sentimental, Flournoy is too good of a writer to ever let the novel stray into that territory. Instead, she presents each woman’s struggles as real and true to life, and the friends help them survive, but not unscathed, as they all carry scars. January marries a man she knows she shouldn’t, solely because she’s pregnant and it’s the most convenient choice. Desiree is estranged from her sister after growing up without both parents — one leaves and one dies. Monique believes she’s not as successful as the others until she goes viral and becomes an influencer, losing part of her self in the process. Nakia wonders if she should be accomplishing more with her life than running a restaurant, while trying to find love as a Queer Black woman.
The last quarter of the book shifts the focus slightly. The politics that were simmering under the surface throughout — the novel takes place from 2008 to 2027 — become the focal point of the novel, as the United States becomes an even more dangerous place for minorities and those who work for justice. Climate change is worsening, economic gaps are widening, and the police is becoming more militarized and technological especially during the 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd. These developments lead to the women’s living lives they wouldn’t have chosen or imagined. While they still support one another, their world values them less and less, leading to a wilderness they may not survive.
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. Mariner Books, September 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.
