Comment on structure

Cook does not use chapters, but instead divides her novel into seven “Parts,” each of which has a title that corresponds to a period of the fifteen-year study of how humans survive in the Wilderness, the world’s only remaining natural environment. Although the story largely unfolds chronologically, every section incorporates flashbacks to explain what happened off the page in order to fill in important gaps of the 15 year experiment. Bea is the protagonist of Part I, “The Ballad of Beatrice.” Part II, “In the Beginning,” deploys a third-person omniscient narrator to provide important history and detail about the study. Beatrice returns as the protagonist of Part III, “The Big Walk.” Agnes is the protagonist of Parts IV through VII, entitled “The Ballad of Agnes,” “Friend or Foe,” “To the Caldera,” and “The Roundup,” respectively. The epilogue is narrated by Agnes.