Imagine travelling from Europe to the Canadian wilderness in 1926 to marry a man you've never met. Imagine carving out a life beyond civilization in the northern forest and lake country of British Columbia. Imagine the hard, backbreaking work. Imagine the privation that can drive you away or drive you mad. Imagine loving the adventure in this young, wild land, only to be told after twenty years that you're going to be flooded out by your government.
Isa Luise Essler is a German writer and intellectual. She immigrated to Canada to marry the trapper and prospector, Wil See. It is now 1946, the Second World War is over and "progress" is king. Because of this post-war mindset Isa Luise and Wil are fighting the fight of their lives. While trying to keep the Nechako Dam Project from flooding their valley, Isa Luise is also corresponding with the incarcerated American poet, Ezra Pound.
Wildnis is about strength, survival and civil disobedience: the strength of character to abandon all you know for the unknown; the ability to survive isolation and hardship; and the vision to fight for your rights.
This novel was inspired by the life of Else Lücke-Seel. (1894–1973).
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