Featured Photo by Megan Clark on Unsplash

A free ARC of this book was sent to me by the author’s team at Books Forward, so thank you for providing the opportunity to read and review this novel.

I like the way Nomad starts out; it’s introspective and calm due to the secluded way Corey lives, alone on her ranch in the Arizona desert, an hour’s drive away from the city. We quickly see why she chose this life, influenced by the undercurrents of trauma running through her every moment. Her little brother Damon died when he was very young due to their mother’s neglect, and ever since then, Corey has isolated herself from other living beings.

However, Corey’s efforts to be alone are ruined when a stray dog comes into her life and is determined not to leave. This dog eventually leads her back into the company of Jack, a man she’d left behind 10 years ago alongside everything else in her old life. From there, we see her grapple with her resurfacing hurt and harrowing memories and find out whether she’s willing to let go of her protective cocoon of solitude.

To start with, this poor dog, Nomad, cannot catch a break. At one point, it’s just one nightmarish situation after another; so if you’re sensitive to seeing pets or animals in mortal danger, I probably wouldn’t recommend this book for you.

Corey can be pretty stubborn, but overall she remains a sympathetic character because you understand what she’s been through and the adverse effects it has had on her, bolstered by the fact that she never sought help; her solution to every uncomfortable emotion is to run and hide. I appreciate that we are given time to understand her way of thinking and her anxieties, and that she herself has time to reckon with her emotional and mental scars. Even though Jack is back in her life, he’s not framed as being a savior come to rescue her or put an end to all of her issues. He’s one component of many that helps her realize a change is needed.

Corey has a few “relapses” before she’s fully ready to open herself up to having others in her life, which feels true to the difficult process of trying to be a real-life human again when you’ve closed yourself off for so long. A certain scene with her mother is probably my favorite of the book in how it serves as an epiphany for Corey and gives us rare insight into the woman who was the main cause of this decades-long pain.

(A sidenote, but it’s always fascinating to me to find out about an abusive/neglectful parent’s backstory and learn what happened to make them as terrible as they are. This stems from my first time reading The Bluest Eye. The context is no justification, but I suppose it reminds me of the annoying futility of the domino effect. Something happening before you were ever born can have devastating consequences on your life decades down the road, and there’s nothing you can do about it…)

I enjoy the role that Corey’s grandmother takes in her life when her mother is unable to fulfill her parental duties, and if anything, I wish there could’ve been more interactions between them. This fragile relationship adds to the tragedy, though; a dynamic that Corey truly needs in her life is also one of the shortest-lived relationships she has.

Other than the people closest to Corey, like Jack and her grandmother, most of the side characters in Nomad aren’t super developed. However, I can understand this since we’re squarely situated in Corey’s POV and, as stated earlier, she’s essentially made herself into a hermit. She doesn’t get close to others and would have no reason to know much about these people who are largely passersby in her life.

Near the beginning of the book, there was quite a bit of timeline confusion for me regarding Corey and her grandmother because of discrepancies with dates. For example, Corey apparently visits her grandmother by airplane in 1973 as an unaccompanied minor, but some letters from her grandmother reveal that Corey would’ve barely been 2 years old that year. And then we later learn that Corey was born in 1987? I assume these details will be fixed before publication since this is an ARC.

Also, considering the subject matter and the tragic note this book starts on, I was wondering if something along the lines of sexual violence would happen (or had already happened off-screen), and it comes pretty close here—so this is a warning if you decide to start this novel.

I do get weary with sexual violence coming up as such a common trauma for female characters, which I’ve stated previously. I’m aware of sexual violence statistics, and it’s more likely that you know a woman who’s experienced sexual violence than not, but I don’t love the continued exposure to it in fictional narratives for numerous reasons. One reason is that it can simply be triggering; another being that it can sometimes come off as needless. Especially here, when Corey is already dealing with some serious unaddressed grief, writing in an attempted assault doesn’t seem like a necessary plot motivator.

Ultimately, I like this book. It’s a heartfelt reflection on familial love and loss and offers some great prose when the focus shifts from the characters to the natural environment; I love the imagery of the canyons, the red-orange expanses of the Arizona desert, and the array of plant life depicted.

Pick up this book if you like:

• Journeys about healing from trauma
• Second-chance romance/exes-to-lovers
• Ecofiction/nature-oriented fiction
• “Man’s best friend” narratives

Pass it by if you don’t want to read about:

• Attempted rape
• An abusive/neglectful mother
• Child death
• Harm to animals