What Wild Women Do

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Rowan, a want to be screenwriter, and Seth, an aspiring novelist, meet at an LA beachfront party. Three weeks later, they’re living together. At one point Seth decides there’s money to be made from YouTube channel content creation, and embarks on honing his craft, which burgeons to what Rowan begins to feel is invasive in their lives, as it morphs into an obsession to boost viewer numbers and constant re-filming to get the perfect video. Eventually they leave LA which becomes too rich for their bank accounts, deciding to return to Ann Arbor where Rowan grew up, and her parents and “married with two kids each” siblings still reside. 

As time’s river flows past them, Rowan feels stifled in her screenwriting ambitions, and generates income taking photos of other families’ milestones. She’s surprised and disappointed not to hear back from a studio employed friend where she’s sent a video of a screenplay pitch just as they were leaving California. The YouTube channel is generating funds, but not enough to cover their bills, since they opted to rent an apartment rather than live with her family. Rowan observes no headway is being made in Seth’s novel, and with her screenwriting stalled while financial pressures grow, tensions increase. 

Rowan and Seth decide to rent a small one room cabin in the Adirondacks for a month to focus on their relationship and writing projects. While out for a solo walk Rowan discovers an abandoned cluster of larger cabins on a lake, and learns it was Camp Calloway, built as a retreat for a wealthy family, later evolving into a “sanctuary” for empowering women aka “Wild Women” week's long stays for classes where they

teach “wildness is a gift that must remain uncaged.” The camp compound is abandoned when the last inheriting family member and founder of the Wild Women retreats, Edith “Eddie” Callaway, mysteriously disappears without a trace in 1975, the same morning she’d hidden a treasure that could make a real difference in someone’s life if they can successfully follow the clues in a poem.  And that’s where this real story of discovery begins. The engaging narrative alternates between the 1960s-70s emerging women’s movement, with the present day couple in a rustic one room Adirondack cabin where we learn a bit of the 60s still remains, and a decades long mystery is unraveled. 

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