Emily Usher's Wild Ground is a tormenting saga of generational abuse and trauma. Narrator Jen reflects on her life through a series of dramatic episodes and must reckon with the individual who triggered them when he reenters her life decades later. 

I get the sense that Jen's narration is supposed to be unreliable, but each recollection is so exhaustive as to shatter the veneer of it being a memory. In other words, there is a lot of writing and a little showing. Perhaps this is an effect of Jen's desperation to understand what happened to her and to be understood: to make her life as she knows it now make sense. 

I think I would have appreciated a more balanced narration of past and present. The present narration was so sparse that it only really interrupted my investment in the past. Perhaps a more seamless interaction between the two temporal scenes would have resulted from more chapters set in the present that better contextualize her reflections. 

I"m also left feeling a bit weary with how Jen (and--dare I say--by extension the author) handles racism. Danny and Denz's race is mentioned every other page, and yet racism is never directly identified, seemingly for the sake of fragile (white) Jen, who just "doesn't understand". In her present-day musings, Jen--having been taken under the wing of another interracial couple--suggests she *does* better understand the racially charged climate of her upbringing, but ultimately it is unclear if she has really come to terms with how it has affected her understanding of herself and of the past.