A History Of Wild Places

Travis and Maggie make it to the same store he stopped in at the beginning of the novel. The woman behind the counter calls 911, and Maggie is taken to the hospital. Travis waits in a hotel overnight. While there, he sees a news story about Colette, who has been identified as an actress named Ellen who went missing 11 years earlier. She and the baby survived. The next day, Travis visits Maggie in the hospital, where she is recovering well from the gunshot wound.

Maggie is released from the hospital and goes back to the hotel with Travis. Her parents come to see her, and she struggles with seeing them. Her mother admits that she had an affair with Cooper, the original leader of Pastoral. She tells Maggie that he convinced her to go back to Pastoral with him, and Maggie was born there. Maggie’s mother then returned home and told her father the baby was his. She revealed this to Maggie soon before her disappearance, which prompted Maggie to go to Pastoral in the first place.

Travis remembers his sister, Ruth, and thinks about how they genuinely wanted to forget things in Pastoral, even though it was forced.