51 pages • 1 hour read
Christina LaurenSomething Wilder
Christina LaurenFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The novel opens in Laramie, Wyoming, 10 years prior to the narrative present. Nineteen-year-old Lily Wilder and 22-year-old Leo Grady are on Lily’s family ranch, Wilder Ranch. They wake up together and sit on the porch with coffee. Looking at Leo, Lily feels excited to start every day this way. The couple kisses and Lily asks if Leo knows where her father Duke Wilder is. She wouldn’t be surprised if he left without saying goodbye again. Duke has been going on treasure-hunting adventures ever since Lily could remember and doesn’t like being on the ranch for long. Lily dismisses her concerns, glad that Leo is there to stay. She hopes they can take over and run the ranch together.
Duke appears and says goodbye to Lily. After he leaves, Lily finds a note from him containing another one of his riddles. Duke loves puzzles and ciphers but Lily can’t stand his games. Duke leaves and Lily brushes away her thoughts to focus on Leo. She’s glad he’s not returning to his life in New York. They kiss and promise they’ll be happy together forever.
Chapter 1 Summary
Ten years later, Lily is living and working in Hester, Utah. One May evening, she and her best friend Nicole meet up at Archie’s Bar where they’ve both worked in the past. Over drinks, they talk about the next excursion with their company Wilder Adventures. They started the company to give tourists treasure-hunting expeditions through the Canyonlands. The adventures are largely inspired by the maps and stories in Duke’s journal. It isn’t the job Lily expected for herself, but the company supports her and Nicole.
Nicole asks about Lily’s recent trip to the bank. Lily wants to ranch again and is trying to secure a loan, but no one will approve her for the money. Lily sees an envelope in Nicole’s bag and demands to know what it is. They tussle over the envelope and Lily retrieves it. Inside, she discovers a note from Jonathan Cross, the man who bought Wilder Ranch years prior. The letter reveals that Jonathan is selling the ranch and wants to offer her the first opportunity to buy it.
Lily holds in her emotions. She and Nicole agree that Lily can’t afford to buy back the ranch even though it’s her dream.
Chapter 2 Summary
The narrative shifts to present day New York City, where Leo and his friend Bradley Daniels are heading to JFK airport to start their vacation. On the way, Bradley scolds Leo for checking his phone and communicating with his boss. Leo’s sister Cora Grady calls to check in with him. She just graduated from college and Leo sent her on a trip to Paris to celebrate. After the call, Bradley bothers Leo about devoting too much energy to work and family. He reminds him that they’re going on their annual vacation and he should enjoy himself.
At the airport, Leo and Bradley meet up with their other friend Walter Gibb. Leo and Walter get upset when Bradley’s friend Terrence “Terry” Trottel” appears, too. They don’t like Terry and can’t understand why Bradley would invite him on their annual trip.
Chapter 3 Summary
Leo and his friends fly out west and then take a bus into the middle of nowhere. Bradley was in charge of planning this year’s trip and has kept their destination a secret. The bus drops them off and they stand on the roadside waiting for their next ride. The friends nag Bradley about their location. He finally reveals that they’re “just outside of Hanksville, Utah” and that they’re going on a treasure-hunting adventure where they’ll be able to live like cowboys for a week (31). Leo is overcome by dread. He hasn’t wanted anything to do with horses since leaving Wyoming.
Nicole shows up to collect the friends. She gives them an overview of their upcoming adventure along the Outlaw Trail. She drives them to base camp and says that they’ll meet her boss in the morning.
Chapter 4 Summary
Lily wakes up early and takes in the view over Horseshoe Canyon. She lights a fire and tends to her horse, Bonnie. Nicole joins her. Lily reflects on the way they became friends and started Wilder Adventures. She never expected to work this job for so long, but she needs the money. Nicole updates her on their newest clients. When they join the group, Lily is shocked to see Leo is one of the guests.
Chapter 5 Summary
Overwhelmed, Lily leaves the campsite. She feels silly seeing Leo after so long and fears that she hasn’t grown up the way he has. She and Leo only spent five months together 10 years ago. However, they’d been in love. When Leo got a call that his mother “had been in an accident,” he flew home to help her and Cora (50). He didn’t call Lily as promised and when she called him, he’d told her he couldn’t talk. He hadn’t contacted her again. Heartbroken, Lily had done her best to forget him.
Nicole finds Lily so they can prepare for orientation. Staring at the list of horse to guest assignments, Lily feels overwhelmed. Nicole checks in with her and Lily pretends she’s fine. The friends rejoin the guests and give them their orientation. Lily has each of them introduce themselves. Bradley is confident and cocky; Walter is quiet and sensitive; and Terry is rude and entitled. Lily feels in control until it’s Leo’s turn to introduce himself. He reveals he’s in IT, which makes sense to Lily given his love of numbers.
Following the introductions, Lily and Nicole give the guests backpacks filled with supplies. They also summarize their trip down the trail. Afterward, Nicole confronts Lily about her odd demeanor. Lily finally admits that Leo is her ex-boyfriend. Nicole is shocked.
Chapter 6 Summary
Leo struggles to pack up his tent after seeing Lily again. When he rejoins the group he admits that he needs different boots and meets Lily in the barn to collect them. He tries initiating a conversation but Lily insists she doesn’t want to talk about their past. Leo understands but asks why she isn’t on the ranch. She admits it doesn’t belong to her anymore and ends the conversation.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
The opening chapters of Something Wilder establish the rules of the narrative world. These narrative sequences also introduce the novel’s primary characters, conflicts, stakes, formal rules, and themes. Written from the third-person point of view, the narrative alternates between episodes from Lily and Leo’s respective storylines. The Prologue introduces the characters’ past romantic history. The temporal shift between the Prologue and Chapter 1 reveals the ways in which Lily and Leo’s plans have been disappointed in the years since they met and fell in love in Laramie, Wyoming. These formal and narrative dynamics enact the novel’s thematic interests. The Prologue represents the protagonists’ shared past, while the subsequent chapters represent their altered circumstances in the narrative present. The disparity between what Lily and Leo promised each other as young adults and their adult realities in the present day incites narrative tension and introduces the novel’s exploration of Reconciling the Past and Present. Indeed neither Lily’s nor Leo’s life has turned out as planned and they carry this conflict inside of themselves. Furthermore, the narrative movements between their respective perspectives augment the narrative conflict and capture how their divergent life paths have created a wedge between them. These dynamics act as the central conflicts of the narrative.
Lily and Leo’s unplanned meeting in Hanksville, Utah, alters the stakes of both Lily’s and Leo’s respective storylines. Ten years prior, Lily fell in love with Leo. Their passionate connection convinced her that “her life was finally starting” (2). Having recently “learned how to manage nearly every aspect of the ranch,” Lily told herself that she and Leo were building a new life together on “her family’s land” (2). Ten years later, Lily is running a treasure-hunting company for tourists—a life she never imagined for herself and a pastime she actively disdained. In the narrative present, she’s desperate to reclaim her old sense of self. She wants to recover her family’s ranch and to restart her life. She wants to rediscover who she is on her own terms. However, Lily feels trapped by her financial situation. She can’t get a loan and can’t afford land. Her circumstantial situation in turn makes Lily doubt herself. Her self-consciousness only grows when she encounters Leo again. Leo is symbolic of Lily’s past and thus reminds her of who she used to be and who she has failed to become.
The scene where Lily and Leo see each other again for the first time in a decade reveals how Leo’s presence impacts Lily’s interior world:
Immediately, Lily felt shabby. Her hair was braided for practicality, not style, and she was wearing more sunblock than makeup. She looked young for her age, but not really in the way most people meant when they said that. If her quick glimpse told her anything, it was that Leo had grown into a full-on man. Meanwhile, here she was, looking poor and unpolished and exactly like the girl he’d left behind all those years ago (50).
Lily’s unease in this passage is shown via the narrator’s attention to Lily’s appearance. Lily becomes self-deprecating about her looks because Leo’s presence has made her emotionally vulnerable. Lily’s fear that she hasn’t changed physically is thus entangled with her fear that she hasn’t emotionally evolved or circumstantially matured. In the scenes that follow, Lily becomes guarded and withholding as a result. Indeed, her repeated attempts to ignore Leo or to end their conversations is revealing of her desire to protect herself from more heartbreak.
The ex-lovers’ reunion similarly disrupts Leo’s internal resolve. Forced to care for his sister from a young age, Leo has learned to put others’ needs above his own. His obsessive attention to his phone in Chapter 2 captures how he prioritizes work and family over himself. Leo has therefore learned to overcome his heartbreak over Lily by burying his own emotions. However, when he reunites with her in the desert these emotions reawaken and compel Leo to face what he experienced with Lily years prior.
In these ways, Leo and Lily’s reunion challenges the protagonists to reconcile with their past experiences and challenges them to reconsider what The Journey Toward Self-Discovery looks like for them. At the same time, the exes’ imminent adventure into the desert forces them into sustained proximity and foreshadows complications to come.
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