Willa of the Wood

Willa of the Wood (2018) is a middle-grade historical fantasy novel by Robert Beatty. The novel follows the titular protagonist, Willa, a 12-year-old jaetter, or thief, from the mystical and ancient Faeran people in the Great Smoky Mountains. Willa retains unusual abilities from her heritage, including camouflage (known as “blending”) and woodwitch magic, that the rest of her people have lost under pressure to conform from the powerful, mysterious padaran. Throughout the narrative, Willa struggles between loyalty to her people and her growing bond with humans. The novel explores The Importance of Identity and Belonging, The Role of Family in Resisting Oppression, and The Challenges of Growing Through Grief.

Willa of the Wood was followed by Willa of Dark Hollow, a sequel published in 2021. Like most of Beatty’s works, Willa of the Wood centers on a strong, young female protagonist exploring a spooky, fantastical historical world at the turn of the 20th century. Willa of the Wood was nominated for multiple Best Books for Young Readers lists and was named a Friends of the Smoky Mountains recommended title. Beatty is also the author of the Serafina series, published from 2015 to 2019.

This guide is based on the 2019 Disney Hyperion paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of physical and emotional abuse, cultural erasure and assimilation, murder, violence, animal suffering and death, child death and injury, and the systemic abuse of Indigenous people.

Plot Summary

Willa, a 12-year-old Faeran girl, travels miles down the mountain from where she lives to rob a homesteader’s house of jewelry and other goods to please her people’s god and spiritual leader, the mysterious padaran. Willa can use “blending” to change the color and texture of her skin and can communicate with trees, but she cannot use her powers inside the homesteader’s home. As she robs him, she sneaks into his bedroom, but the man and his dog, alone in the large home, wake up and chase after her, shooting her in the shoulder. Willa runs to the barn, where the man realizes she is a young girl and tries to care for her, but she sprints away, pursued by the homesteader. Willa calls wolves for assistance, and the leader of the pack, Luthien, carries her to safety.

Luthien takes Willa up Kuwa’hi, the mountain where she lives, but guides her to Atagahi, a magical lake only bears can find, to heal her wounds. When she is mostly healed, she returns to Dead Hollow, her people’s ancestral home, where she is confronted by the other young jaetters, Gredic, Ciderg, Kearnin, and Ninraek. All Faeran are born in pairs of twins, but Willa’s twin, Alliw, died when she was a girl. The jaetters attack Willa, but she has already hidden her goods from the homestead and escapes their grasp, running through the winding underbelly of the Hollow until she finds, to her shock, a prison containing human children.

Willa shares cookies with one of the prisoners, Iska, before her prejudice against humans takes over and she flees to escape being discovered by the guards. She runs to her grandmother, who cannot walk and is the last woodwitch in the Hollow. She tells her grandmother about everything she has experienced, and her grandmother warns her to keep everything a secret. The jaetters and guards come and haul Willa to the Great Hall of the Hollow, where the padaran confronts her. Willa uses her own satchel and her grandmother’s satchel to trick Gredic, who tries to claim her take as his own, and then gives the padaran more wealth than she has ever brought, pleasing him. The padaran, however, smells wolves on her and brings her into his private chambers.

The padaran’s chambers are filled with collected human items, and he even lives like a human, but he takes her to the mountainside opposite the Hollow. He shows her bear traps he has constructed so they can sell pelts to humans for money. Willa realizes they intend to trap Luthien and her pups; she betrays the padaran by alerting Luthien about the trap. As she runs, she uses her body to disguise one of the rock markers, and the padaran steps into the trap, revealing his true form to be gray, bent, and slimy.

Willa runs home and discovers that Gredic has fatally wounded her grandmother. Her grandmother tells her a name—“Naillic”—and instructs her to only use it as a last resort, since it is the truth at the heart of the Faeran world. Willa uses magic to escape the Hollow, nearly exhausting her life force, and gets swept away in the river. A fawn and blue ghost fireflies soothe her grief, and she decides to climb Kuwa’hi. She sees the entire mountainous world stretch out from the peak, but then sees explosions as loggers clear the forest.

Willa runs to help but finds countless dead animals and fleeing Cherokee. She gets caught in a landslide and pushed into a logjam in the river with a black mountain lion, who is trapped under some logs and wounded. Willa uses woodcraft to free the mountain lion, and otters help her glide away through the river, escaping the humans and the hunting jaetters. Willa realizes she needs companionship and decides to seek out the homesteader.

Over the ensuing days, Willa cautiously befriends the homesteader, Nathaniel, and his dog, Scout. He is kind to her and welcomes her into his home, giving her food and a place to stay as they teach each other about the natural and the human world, including how to write in English and how to communicate with bees. Nathaniel’s land is threatened by the logging company, whom he believes killed his wife and children. Willa uses her rudimentary understanding of English to spell out the names on his family’s graves, and discovers that his son, Iska, was one of the children trapped by the Faeran.

After the bees kill their queen and nearly all die, Willa and Nathaniel are discouraged. Nathaniel finally tells her that he spends most of his time trying to get justice for his wife and children and searching for his children’s bodies. He found his wife’s body in the river but still doesn’t know what happened to his children. Soon after, a confrontation with some loggers goes awry as Willa uses magic to drain the loggers of life and one of them shoots and kills Scout. Willa, overwhelmed by how much Nathaniel has lost, goes to retrieve his children from the Faeran so he can have a family again.

Willa frees all the children, including all three of Nathaniel’s. She uses woodcraft to help them escape, telling them to hide at night and not wait for her to come to them. She sacrifices herself to the guards so they can escape after discovering what “Naillic” means—it is the name of her father’s twin brother. Willa fakes her death, and the guards drag her body to the padaran. She revives herself and confronts the padaran, revealing him to be her father’s brother, who killed her family for going against his corrupt leadership. A riot breaks out and many Faeran die in the chaos, and all the Hollow burns to the ground from the padaran’s torches. Willa and Gredic fall into an abyss, but Willa uses her knowledge of the otters to survive the river through the mountain, while Gredic drowns.

Willa tries to rejoin the surviving Faeran, but they reject her as the person who destroyed their clan and culture. She finds Nathaniel’s children and helps guide them home, but believes she has no place with them anymore. After Nathaniel tearfully reunites with his children, however, they find her and beg her to stay with them, telling her they love her. Willa tearfully agrees.