Angela Flournoy’s 2025 novel, The Wilderness, is a work of contemporary literary fiction that follows four friends—Desiree Richard, January Wells, Nakia Washington, and Monique L.—over two decades as they navigate their changing lives in Los Angeles and New York. The narrative unfolds in a nonlinear fashion, tracing how the women’s powerful bond is tested by family secrets, personal ambitions, and a devastating loss that reshapes their lives. Set between 2008 and 2027, the novel is grounded in a period of significant social change in America, touching on the effects of the financial crisis, the gentrification of historic Black neighborhoods, the right-to-die movement, and widespread protests against police brutality. Through the intertwined stories of its protagonists, the novel explores themes of The Resilience and Primacy of Chosen Sisterhood, Navigating Precarity in the Search for a Livable Life, and The Inescapable Weight of the Past.

Flournoy is the author of the acclaimed novel The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and explored the lives of a large Black family in Detroit. In The Wilderness, she continues her examination of Black life, this time focusing on the complexities of chosen family and female friendship. The book was named a most anticipated work by numerous publications prior to its release, building on the critical success of Flournoy’s debut.

This guide is based on the 2025 Mariner Books hardback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide feature depictions of cursing, sexual content, physical abuse, illness, graphic violence, sexual harassment, substance use, suicidal ideation, mental illness, racism, death by suicide, and death.

Plot Summary

In 2008, Desiree Richard accompanies her ailing grandfather, Nolan Richard, on a flight from Los Angeles to Paris. Nolan requires insulin shots and portable dialysis, which Desiree administers. The trip’s true purpose is for Nolan to die by assisted suicide in Zurich, Switzerland, through the Eternus organization. In Paris, Nolan revisits places from his past and his time in the army, including the Tuileries Garden. He reveals he may have fathered a child in France he never knew. Overcome with guilt over her involvement in Nolan’s impending death, Desiree insists they call her older sister, Danielle Joyner, a medical resident in Cleveland. Danielle is furious when she learns of Nolan’s plan, questioning Nolan’s mental state and accusing Desiree of too vehemently supporting him. On the train to Zurich, Desiree dreams of her late mother, Sherelle, only to wake up and discover that Nolan has died of natural causes in his seat.

Ten years later, in 2018, January Wells is living alone in Harlem after leaving her long-term boyfriend, Morris Starling. Her friends, Desiree, Nakia Washington, and Monique L., are vacationing in Martinique on a trip January proposed but could not join, a financial strain that contributed to her breakup. January is pregnant with Morris’s child but has not told him. She struggles with morning sickness and anxiety while drafting a letter asking Morris to relinquish his parental rights. During a tense video call, Desiree advises her to wait. January wanders through Harlem afterward, where she sees a statue of Harriet Tubman adorned with a pink “pussy hat”; the absurdity of the image makes her laugh.

The narrative shifts back to 2012. Four years after Nolan’s death, Desiree has inherited a small fortune from her grandfather’s secret real estate holdings and moved to New York to live with Nakia. After she returns from LA, where she sold Nolan’s house, Desiree hosts a night out with Nakia, January, and Monique. Morris’s friends, a doctor named Chika and a man named Dale, join them. During the night, Dale sexually assaults Nakia by groping her. The incident, combined with her feeling of alienation, solidifies Nakia’s decision to move back to Los Angeles. Desiree suspects that Chika may have dated her estranged sister, Danielle, and considers starting an affair with him.

In a 2019 blog post, Monique recounts her experience in 2018 as a new librarian at a university in the South. She was appointed to a committee tasked with addressing the history of two former quarters for enslaved people located on the college campus. She describes how the committee, under pressure from the university, systematically downplayed the history of enslavement, referring to enslaved people as “workers.” Another Black member, Professor Nnamdi Watson, pushed back against the erasure. Monique grew close to Nnamdi but ultimately felt isolated from both the university establishment and campus activists after refusing to endorse the project’s final, sanitized historical narrative.

By 2015, Nakia is running her successful Los Angeles restaurant, Safe House Café. When her head chef, Miguel, leaves for a family emergency in Mexico, Nakia takes over the kitchen and begins a secret relationship with a cook named Reina, a Guatemalan immigrant. Their relationship is complicated by their boss-employee dynamic and Reina’s undocumented status. Two months later, Miguel returns; his brother was the target of a violent assault. Feeling obligated to reinstate him, Nakia effectively demotes Reina; she feels betrayed, quits her job, and ends their relationship.

Returning to 2012, Desiree has an affair with Chika throughout the summer, consisting of secret, late-night encounters at his apartment. Desiree confirms her suspicion that Chika and Danielle had a serious relationship when she finds evidence of a trip they took together on his laptop. Later, she intercepts a package from Danielle to Chika containing an old T-shirt. The affair dissolves when Chika realizes Desiree’s connection to Danielle after she sings a song Danielle loved. He emotionally withdraws, and Desiree leaves his apartment for the last time.

In 2009, Danielle arrives at Nolan’s house six months after his death to collect family belongings. She confronts Desiree, accusing her of being too eager to help Nolan die. As she leaves, Desiree gives her a small box with the last of Nolan’s ashes. Danielle breaks down in tears, takes the ashes, and leaves, cementing their estrangement.

In 2022, Nakia and her partner, Jay, host a dinner party where Monique is a guest. Monique proposes a theory that the housed population will eventually turn violently against the unhoused, which makes Nakia uncomfortable. Later, Nakia and Monique argue about Monique’s pursuit of online fame, which Jay, a board member for the speaker series Tru Talk, is helping her with.

In 2019, a worried Desiree flies to California and finds January experiencing severe postpartum depression and a painful pelvic organ prolapse after the birth of her second son, Brook. Convinced her situation is untenable, January flees with Desiree and the baby, seeking refuge at Nakia’s house.

In blog posts from 2023 and 2025, Monique reflects on her father’s recent death, the support she received from her friends, and her own past failures to be present for them. She also shares a poem about the accumulating weight of loss.

In 2024, Nakia, Desiree, January, and Monique meet up in Chicago, where Nakia is a finalist for a culinary award. At a mixer, an insider indicates that Nakia will not win, and the friends leave after a brief, uncomfortable after-party.

In 2027, Danielle, now married with twin daughters in DC, travels to New York to meet her father, Terry Joyner. A flashback reveals that in 2013, she discovered Desiree’s affair with Chika, a discovery that further damaged their relationship. Her meeting with Terry is unsatisfying. On the train home, she decides to reconnect with Desiree and calls Nakia for her number. Jay answers, revealing that Nakia is dead. The friends’ immediate grief is depicted in a series of fragmented chapters.

A flashback reveals the events of Nakia’s death. During the “Bunker Hill Uprisings” against police brutality, Nakia, her friend Arielle, and a volunteer named L. are distributing food downtown. They are kettled by large, possibly unmanned police vehicles onto the Sixth Street Bridge with a group of protestors. A National Guard helicopter douses them with water, and Nakia is shot with a “less-lethal” rubber bullet. The group makes a run for it as the trucks fire more projectiles. Nakia is hit several more times but makes it off the bridge, only to die from her injuries later.

In the years following, Desiree visits a medium for comfort and resolves to reconnect with Danielle for Nakia’s sake. Monique, meanwhile, decides to leave the United States after a video of her confronting a vendor harassing an unhoused woman goes viral. January now lives in Nakia’s house with her sons. The novel closes with Desiree and Danielle meeting in a park in Washington, DC, as Danielle’s teenage daughters wait to meet their aunt for the first time.