The Wilds

Claude Teweles, now Julia Teweles, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was first published at the age of 15 by the National Geographic Society and worked as a production manager on the film City on Fire in 1979. Teweles' first novel, The Stalker, was published by Zebra Books in 1984. The only other novel I could locate was The Wilds, originally published in 1989 by Dell. Putting my hands on that book first, I decided to brave the elements and march in. 

The Wilds works like a survival adventure novel with an embedded sense of unease and suspense. The cover suggests this may be a woodsy slasher outing, which roped me, but the book is placed in my Paperback Warrior “disaster” tag due to the unexpected raging blizzard that entraps the characters.

One of three main characters is Gordon, a displaced former high-school teacher that is now working as an experienced camp counselor for Wolf Gulch. His nightmare happened last year when a young boy was mauled by a wild animal on his watch. Gordon is hoping all of this is behind him now as he launches into a new season of camp counseling.

The other two main characters are Del and Kyle, both of which have an underlining feud. Del is a 15-year old camp counselor that has some reserved psychotic tendencies. He must be first at everything and experiences an inferiority complex. His counterpart is Kyle, a teenager dealing with the loss of his baby brother in a freak bathtub drowning. Kyle has natural leadership qualities, but squanders opportunities with a reckless abandonment. The three characters are lumped into a group of about 15 campers total. 

As a confidence exercise, the group have the looming requirement to climb and cross a treacherous pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. This is the same stretch that the famed Donner party experienced in the 1800s – the one with the people eating each other to stay alive. The group constantly spook each other with the phobia of a “Donner Man” stalking them through the wilds on a quest for human flesh. This tense urban legend maintains momentum as the group embark further into the forest, eventually creating hallucinogenic effects on the group when they are snowbound in a freak blizzard halfway up the mountain. 

The Wilds is a really interesting novel that has an identity crisis. It works like a horror novel – void of any traditional 80s horror. Instead, as the blizzard envelopes the group, the narrative evolves into a survival of the fittest campaign akin to Lord of the Flies. Kids turn on kids, hunger outperforms human decency, and people begin dying. In the book's finale, all three main characters are having terrifying experiences that they have created in their own minds due to the fatigue, hunter, and harsh elements. Whether any of this is real or not isn't a question – it isn't and every reader knows that. But, one has to suspend disbelief to really put themselves into the shoes of these stressed characters. If you can successfully do that, then The Wilds is an enjoyable read. If you want Jason in a hockey mask plowing down campers then you have taken the wrong trail.

Get The Wilds HERE.