Shelterwood

Written by Lisa Wingate in 2024, Shelterwood is a work of historical fiction that also includes elements of mystery and features dual timelines; the first takes place in 1909 and the other in 1990. The protagonist of the 1909 timeline is Olive Augusta Radley, an 11-year-old girl who runs away from home to save herself and her adopted sister Nessa from abuse and exploitation. The protagonist of the 1990 timeline is Valerie Boren-Odell, a ranger at a newly-opened national park. 

As a worldwide bestselling novelist, Wingate has written over 30 books translated into 40 languages, including Before We Were Yours (2017) and The Book of Lost Friends (2020). Her work has garnered a range of accolades over the years. She has won the Southern Book Prize and the Goodreads Choice Award and has also been recognized among the 2023 Distinguished Alumni of Oklahoma State University. Shelterwood is her 33rd novel. The narrative uses the setting, cultures, and history of southeastern Oklahoma to explore the impact of Nature as a Source of Healing and Refuge, given that both protagonists turn to the mountains for peace and shelter. The novel also discusses themes of Exploitation as a Tool of the Powerful and Children’s Resilience Amidst Adversity. 

This guide refers to the 2024 hardcover edition published by Ballantine Books. 

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include descriptions of child abuse, racism, and injustices against Indigenous people. Depictions of substance use disorder and sexual violence against a child are also present. 

Plot Summary

In 1909, 11-year-old Olive Augusta Radley lives in terror of her stepfather, Tesco Peele. After Olive’s father died, her mother married Tesco. Now, her mother has developed an opium use disorder and is largely absent. Tesco Peele works for a wealthy landowner named E. Niles Lockridge. Although Olive does not know this until late in the novel, Lockridge is in fact her biological father. The man whom Olive knows as her father, Keyes Radley, was another employee of Lockridge’s. 

Like many influential white men in the area, Lockridge uses his political power to establish himself as the legal guardian for local Choctaw children. As their legal guardian, Lockridge controls the tribal lands that the children and their families own. Because the land in the area is rich in timber and oil, Lockridge makes a great deal of money from the properties he controls by proxy. The children are merely an afterthought to him; Lockridge neglects them and sometimes even orders his employees to kill them. 

Before the events of the novel begin, Keyes and Lockridge disagree over the fact that Radley opts to shelter and adopt two Choctaw girls rather than kill them. Previously, the task of burying or killing the Choctaw children sometimes fell to Keyes as an employee of Lockridge. Keyes was once tasked with burying three Choctaw sisters in a cave. Doing his best to honor them despite the circumstances, he buried them with the traditional funerary objects of their culture. (Almost a century later, the girls’ remains will be discovered within the boundaries of a new national park called Horsethief Trail National Park.) 

The girls whom Keyes decided not to kill, Nessa and Hazel, are now Olive’s adopted sisters when the story begins in the 1909 timeline. Nessa is six and Hazel is 13. At the outset of the novel, Keyes is dead, and Olive and Nessa now live with Tesco in a house on Lockridge’s property. Hazel recently disappeared after Olive secretly witnessed Tesco sexually abusing her. Olive fears the worst and decides to run away with Nessa before Tesco can harm either of them further. Olive plans to take Nessa into the Winding Stair Mountains, where she and her family lived before Keyes’s death. 

Olive and Nessa encounter difficulties shortly after fleeing home. Once in the woods, they lose their pony and their supply packs. In the forest, they encounter three children who are siblings, and who are also members of the Choctaw nation. These children—Tula, Pinti, and Koi—become Olive’s friends and travel companions. As the eldest and best educated of the children, Olive takes on the role of leader. 

Realizing that they need help and more resources if they are going to make the trip into the mountains, Olive takes the false name of Hazel Rusk (her missing adopted sister’s name) and knocks on the door of a house in the forest. She claims that her pony spooked and ran when she was traveling to town on an errand for her mother. The residents of the home, Mr. and Mrs. Grube, believe her story and agree to help her. Mr. Grube retrieves Olive’s pony and then leaves home for his week-long work shift on the railway. Mrs. Grube is a budding political activist and wants to travel to the town of Talihina, Oklahoma to hear a speech by a female politician. Although this goal is contrary to the will of her husband and the social expectations of the time, she and Olive travel to Talihina together. 

Olive concocts a plan so that the other children can follow Mrs. Grube’s wagon. Upon arriving in town, the other children camp in the woods while Olive stays with Mrs. Grube. Olive is inspired when she hears the female politician speak. She takes a few odd jobs in town for the day, making money to support herself and the other children in her care. While in town, she meets two boys about her age. One is Dewey Mullins, who is a troublemaker and a natural leader, though he takes his natural leadership role less seriously than Olive does hers. Dewey and his friends decide to team up with Olive’s group. Olive and Dewey continue to conflict throughout their time together. 

After the excitement of the political rally dies down and Mrs. Grube leaves town to head home, Olive and the other children plan to continue their journey into the mountains. However, their plans are foiled when Olive and Dewey disagree on the street. A woman watching from her porch believes that Olive is being robbed and fires her gun, and Dewey’s friend is shot. The children are forced to make a long-term camp in the woods near town while their friend heals from his gunshot wound. Olive and Tula, the eldest of the group, take jobs in town. This arrangement continues for the summer. As the days go by, the children establish ways to govern themselves, and Olive makes plans for their future community in the mountains, naming that eventual settlement “Shelterwood Town.” 

At the end of the summer, Tesco Peele, who has been searching for Olive, finally catches up with her. Olive manages to escape from Tesco in town and flees back to the camp, but their camp has been raided as well, and only Nessa and Koi have avoided capture. Realizing that Tesco has anticipated her plans to retreat to her old mountain home, Olive leads Nessa and Koi back onto the road. Their situation becomes desperate before a report of their plight finally reaches the ears of the female politician who inspired Olive with her speech. The politician intervenes, helping to reunite all of the children in the safe care of a trustworthy orphanage. 

Nearly 100 years later, in 1990, Valerie Boren-Odell arrives in the same area near the Winding Stair Mountains. She is a park ranger and has taken a job at the newly opened Horsethief Trail National Park. Valerie has a seven-year-old son Charlie who moves with her. Valerie is a single mother; her husband, Joel, died before Charlie was born. 

As a park ranger, Valerie investigates several events that appear unconnected at first but that are actually part of the same mystery. She eventually learns that a local man named Alton Parker is carrying out a large, illegal logging operation in the national park. To accomplish this, he has taken over guardianship of two local children of Choctaw heritage, Sydney and Braden, so that he can access their family land, which borders the national park. That land is owned by Olive, who is now an elderly woman and goes by the nickname “Budgie.” Budgie is Sydney and Braden’s grandmother. Alton drugs Budgie and secretly places her in an elder care facility. Suspecting foul play, Braden runs away and camps out in the national park with his girlfriend, then spies on Alton Parker. Meanwhile, Sydney is placed in a foster care home at Alton’s request. 

Alton also commits other crimes to facilitate his illegal logging operation. When the remains of three children are found in a cave near the logging site, he hires someone to clear out the funerary objects so that the park will not conduct a serious investigation. 

Valerie becomes involved in the situation when she meets Sydney, who asks Valerie if she has seen Braden in the park. Valerie also becomes interested in the unidentified remains of the children. Valerie persists in investigating the case even when Alton Parker and his contacts try to intimidate her. She develops a strong friendship and budding romantic interest with a local tribal police officer. He helps her and supports her with the investigation. 

In the end, they find the logging operation and discover Braden’s camp in the forest. Nessa is at Braden’s camp, having joined him after he called her to help rescue Budgie from the senior care center. Nessa tells Valerie her life story, connecting the novel’s two timelines. In the novel’s epilogue, Valerie attends a press conference announcing the grand jury indictment of Alton Parker and his co-conspirators. Sydney and Braden also attend with the elderly Budgie, Nessa, and Hazel.