Wildwood Creek

Lisa Wingate's Wildwood Creek weaves two timelines together, alternating between the story of Bonnie Rose, an 18-year-old Irish schoolteacher in frontier Texas in 1861, and Allie Kirkland, a present-day graduate student drawn into the mystery of Bonnie and the vanished town of Wildwood.

In February 1861, Bonnie sits before Harland Delevan, a wealthy, cold-eyed landowner who hires her to teach in Wildwood, a remote settlement he owns in the Texas hills. Bonnie and her nine-year-old sister, Maggie May, are orphans carrying a terrible secret: Years earlier, a Comanche raiding party captured them, leaving Bonnie with scars around her neck, burned flesh, crooked fingers, and deep psychological wounds. Educated at a mission school after being ransomed, Bonnie hopes Wildwood will offer a fresh start. Delevan instructs her to sign only "Bonnie Rose" on the contract, erasing her Irish surname and her past.

In the present day, Allie Kirkland, a graduate film student at the University of Texas, attends a casting call at the old Berman Theater in Austin. Allie's father was a film director who died when she was eight, and she wants to follow in his footsteps despite opposition from her mother and controlling stepfather, Lloyd. Allie's roommate and best friend, Kim, auditions for the newest Mysterious History docudrama miniseries, a reality show that immerses participants in historically re-created settings. Allie interviews for a production assistant position and meets Tova Kask, the icy production coordinator, who asks whether Allie knows the name Bonnie Rose. Kim suspects the executive producer is Rav Singh, a famous director from Mumbai. Both women receive callbacks: Kim joins the cast as a bathhouse worker, and Allie is hired as Tova's assistant, enduring Tova's hostility in the Berman basement while organizing costumes and managing deliveries. An unidentified man appears one day, leaving handwritten costume measurements; his rental card identifies him as Blake Fulton, a security professional working for the production, though no one can explain his purpose in the costume department.

Bonnie and Maggie board the steamboat New Ila for the journey upriver. Captain James Engle, a kind Norwegian riverman, pays special attention to them. Essie Jane, a 13-year-old enslaved girl, nurses Bonnie through an illness, and the two form a bond. When the first mate, Grazide, assaults Bonnie in a corridor, Essie Jane fetches the captain, who intervenes at gunpoint and expels Grazide. At the final landing, Engle promises, "If you need me, Bonnie Rose, I will come for you" (102).

Back in Austin, Allie assembles costume diaries for over 80 historical characters. Aided by Stewart Mulder, a socially awkward law-student neighbor who works in the campus library, she confirms the docudrama is set in Wildwood, a real boomtown along what is now Moses Lake, where an 1861 gold rush drew settlers before the community mysteriously vanished. Kim sells her truck to a man named Jake and falls in love with him.

Bonnie, Maggie, Essie Jane, and Big Neb, an enormously strong enslaved man whom Engle has tasked with protecting Bonnie, travel overland with a supply train led by the frontiersman Grayson Hardwick. A dangerous river crossing nearly kills them before they reach Wildwood.

Tova sends Allie alone to the reconstructed Wildwood set near Moses Lake. In the schoolhouse at dusk, she encounters Rav Singh, who proposes dark theories about Bonnie, suggesting she was a seductress or witch who drove the town to ruin. Singh shows Allie a tintype photograph of the real Bonnie Rose, who bears a startling resemblance to Allie. He asks her to assume Bonnie's identity for the summer in exchange for funding her film education.

In Wildwood, Bonnie settles into teaching but finds the community hostile. Delevan's mother holds bizarre afternoon teas, forcing townswomen into borrowed finery, while her simple-minded sister, Peasie, watches with childlike delight. When Delevan returns, his behavior toward Bonnie turns uncomfortably intimate. Asmae, the eldest enslaved woman in the household, warns Bonnie to bolt her door at night. A young woman from Red Leaf Hollow, reportedly Delevan's previous favorite, throws herself off the bluffs, and the townspeople blame Bonnie.

Allie accepts Singh's offer and moves to the set. Blake Fulton takes up residence next to her quarters behind the schoolhouse, keeping strange hours but proving warm and helpful by day. Their relationship deepens through morning conversations and shared evenings. Blake reveals he is an army veteran who served in Afghanistan and now runs a security business; Allie opens up about her father's death and her fear of vulnerability.

Singh announces the docudrama's twist: Over one million dollars in fool's gold has been seeded in the surrounding claims. The communal atmosphere fractures as neighbors become competitors. Kim, miserable and homesick, threatens to quit. Although Allie initially refuses to smuggle a phone, she later brings one to the set to receive research from Stewart. She gives Kim the phone, hoping to keep her friend from leaving. Kim arranges a secret meeting with Jake at a bridge downriver but does not return. Search parties find no trace of her, and Allie's confession to Blake about the phone strains their newly formed bond.

In 1861, Wildwood descends into tyranny. Delevan declares martial law, and families vanish in the night, leaving all their possessions behind. The children call the missing people "Gonefolk." Bonnie receives a love letter from Captain Engle, secretly delivered through Hardwick, declaring his love and warning of danger. She sends a desperate reply through Big Neb: "Come for us, James. Please. Bonnie Rose" (245).

The crisis peaks when Delevan's men round up the town's children as hostages in the schoolhouse. Essie Jane brings word from Asmae that Delevan has killed the dissenting townspeople and that his mother has ordered the children eliminated as witnesses. During a massive storm that night, Bonnie, Essie Jane, Big Neb, Maggie, and 11 children flee in a mule wagon stocked with supplies and two bags of gold coin prepared by Peasie. They race for the river ford, praying the rising water will cut off pursuit.

In the present, Allie wakes in a cave, disoriented and drugged, and finds Kim badly injured in a deeper chamber surrounded by human skeletal remains, scraps of calico, and disintegrating bonnets: the apparent resting place of Wildwood's lost citizens. Near the entrance, Stewart appears, seeming at first to be a rescuer. He reveals that he has been stalking Allie for months, hacking her communications, and watching from the woods; he lures Kim with a fake text and brings both women to the cave. When Stewart becomes violent, Blake and Andy, the village blacksmith, close in from behind. Blake lunges, Stewart fires a gun, and Allie loses consciousness. She wakes on the lakeshore surrounded by rescuers; Grandpa Len, an old-timer from the nearby hill community of Chinquapin Peaks, helps track Stewart to the cave.

On August 1, the village gathers for a sunset wedding as Kim marries Jake. Blake gives Allie a reproduction of an old article about a sprint horse named Wildwood Rose, owned by "Bonnie Hardwick," with a photograph showing Bonnie alive around 1870 with her children, confirming she survived.

On the production's final day, Tova gives Allie reference letters and scholarship information for film school, fulfilling Singh's promise. Rav Singh gives her a confiscated copy of Jane Eyre with a hidden recording device. Allie and Blake listen to a 1938 interview with Essie Jane Porter, age 91, recorded as part of the Federal Writers' Project's Slave Narratives collection. Essie Jane recounts Wildwood's full history: Delevan's tyranny, the murder of the townspeople, and the desperate escape with the children. She describes the group's journey to Montana Territory with Hardwick, where Bonnie married him, raised the rescued children, and built a horse ranch. After Hardwick died in a riding accident, Essie Jane secretly wrote to Captain Engle, telling him where to find Bonnie. Years later, a man came walking toward the ranch. Bonnie recognized him, dropped the laundry she was holding, and ran to him. Engle had come at last. Essie Jane closes with an affirmation of faith: "He a God of miracles and wonders. And love the greatest one of all" (368).