1800’s Australia. Two young girls who are barely friends, get stranded in the wilderness. They’re on a river jaunt with one set of parents when a storm comes up, the boat capsizes and they’re lost in the ensuing flood. They survive because a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, that recently lost its own pups finds them on the riverbank and adopts them. At first just fighting to stay alive, survive the elements and avoid starvation, the girls slowly adapt to life in the wild. They learn to hunt with the thylacine, eat raw meat, and communicate with growls and body language instead of words. Terrified of their adopted parents getting shot, they avoid the few people they see. But the other girl’s father never gave up searching for them. Years later he finds them and drags them back to civilization. Tries to bathe them, make them wear clothes and sit at a table again, to speak in words. They have to be tied up because keep attempting to escape back into the forest. Until one is forced to go to school and the other ends up on a ship at sea- so oddly enough, the final part of the book involves a lot about whale hunting. The two girls never shake the close bond they formed when living in the forest and long to be together again. Warning: this does not have a happy ending.

This book is rough and stark. Not only because the language is broken (narrated by one of the girls who lost her use of language while living in the forest and struggled to regain speech) and some of the Australian terms unfamiliar- but also because there’s lots of blood and violence. The girls thrilling to the hunt, delighting in killing and eating other animals. Their behavior- especially when brought back to a tidy house- described as very uncouth and fierce. Bounty hunters and other humans shooting any thylacine they can, in retaliation for loosing sheep. Not to mention the descriptions of whales being butchered.

And yet I read it through in just a few sittings, gripped by the story. I wanted to like it a lot better, though. Many parts were rather unbelievable- even in the realm of fiction. And so much of the story felt like a retelling of Amala and Kamala from India, just in a different setting. Feral children raised by thylacine instead of wolves.

from the Dogear Diary ( )

This is an unusual book. It's written as though narrated by someone with imperfect English, but although it's jarring initially, the story is engaging to the point that the reader becomes accustomed to it.
In a way, it's almost a fantasy novel. The events in the book are an amalgam of stories based in truth involving wolves, but with a Tasmanian setting. There are some liberties and inconsistencies that might not be obvious to a non-Tasmanian that further removed the story from truthfulness for me. It's a folk tale, in essence, and I didn't feel an authentic Tasmania within its pages, although it is a good and unusual story. ( )

Into That Forest by Louis Nowra is an original and vivid story of two little girls who are lost in the Tasmanian bush in the 1800s after a boating accident claimed the lives of the adults in the party. They are saved and raised by two Tasmanian tigers, learning to survive under the harshest of conditions, slowly losing their language and civilized ways as they become feral.

The story unfolds in broken English as told by one of the girls, Hannah. She relates how she and Becky learn over time to live like the tigers, sleeping during the day and hunting through the night. They eat only raw meat, walk on all fours, and learn to communicate with growls and snuffles. Meanwhile Becky’s father has never given up the hunt for his daughter and eventually finds the girls, having to capture them and force them to leave the wilderness. It soon becomes very clear that the father wants to separate the girls as he believes his daughter will never be totally civilized while the two are together.

I became totally immersed in this well plotted and interesting book and felt a great sympathy for the girls and the tigers, who are today, extinct. The author obviously did a fair amount of research into both survival techniques and these rare animals but what stood out to me was the girls will to live and the unbreakable bond between them. ( )

Oh my goodness this is amazing! I picked it up after seeing a David Hill review. He said 'I wish I had written this book.' I hunted it out in Wellington and I'm so glad I did. No more description - go find it! ( )

Two girls are adopted by Tazmanian tigers after the parents of one of them are killed in a boating accident. They slowly become feral losing their language and civilized habits. Eventually they are discovered by a bounty hunter who kills the male tiger. One girl's father joins the hunter to find the girls and return them to civilization with mixed results.

The Australian accent was definitely heard and added to the interest of this short but interesting story. I have to admit I'm glad it wasn't any longer. It was just the right length to tell the tale. ( )