Out of the Woods

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.

In Out of the Woods, Sarah’s relationship with her mother Marcie is significant to the present-day timeline, establishing that parent-child relationships endure beyond death. Both her profound love and her terminal illness define Sarah’s adolescence, shaping her identity and her relationship with Caleb. After Marcie’s death, Sarah centers her grief in her life and, through it, becomes mired in self-recrimination that stops her from moving forward. Through the Reignite retreat, Sarah learns to let go of her grief and guilt, loving herself the way her mother would. Because of this, Sarah and Caleb can confront how grief has also shaped their relationship and commit to reshaping their dynamic, continuing to carry Marcie’s memory with them, but in new and more fruitful ways.

When the novel opens, Sarah is hosting a fundraiser for ALS research in Marcie’s memory and sees the low turnout as reflective of her larger sense of purposelessness and lack of accomplishment. She frames this feeling of failure in the context of her mother’s expectations, thinking, “I am the closest thing to her left living, and I don’t think she’d be proud of me” (10).