Agnes saw that what people had taken for strength and leadership in her mother might just have been desperation, a manic instinct to survive. She didn't know if there was a difference. Shouldn't there be?
A reminder that, for all the fantasies urban folk have of living with 'nature', actually living in the wild is not easy at all, although, with the way we've been plundering the Earth, there may come a time soon enough when our cities will become unliveable and only a few of us will be lucky enough to be able to retreat into what's left of the wild where we will be required to prioritise not just needs but also people, as a young mother discovers in this dystopian novel set in the future. She shifts to the wilderness along with her husband and child, and a few others; the child is too ill to survive the City, and she will do whatever she can to keep her alive.