Named one of PEOPLE’s Best Books of June 2026
Named one of BookBub’s Best New Historical Fiction titles
Named one of NPR’s 10 new books in June will transport you

“[A] devastating new novel of love and loss…”
—NPR

“…a stirring tale of love, loss, and loyalty.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A deeply affecting novel.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“Kevin Powers’s Children of the Wild is a heart-wrenching epic that takes readers from southwest Virginia to the battlefields of France to the alpine wilderness of the Bighorn Mountains and back again. Vast in its scope and intimate in its detail, Powers’s newest novel tells a breathtaking story of three young people, coming together and coming of age in the early twentieth century. Children of the Wild is about friendship and love and figuring out what we believe in or if we believe in anything at all. Powers is great at writing war stories, but he’s even better at writing stories about what war does to us while we’re trying—with everything we’ve got—to hold onto our humanity. I inhaled this book.”
—Rachel Beanland, author of The House is on Fire

“Kevin Powers has conjured out of the mists of the Virginia mountains a novel of extraordinary beauty and power. Children of the Wild is about many things–the natural world, family, friendship, money, and war, most definitely war–but ultimately it’s about the endless ways love finds to break us and make us. Powers can write; we’ve all known that since his era-defining debut The Yellow Birds, and Children of the Wild demonstrates his continuing rare mastery on every page.”
—Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Devil Makes Three

“Powers approaches love, friendship, war, class, poverty, disease, and industrialism with clear eyes, but also with a sense of stoic idealism about the value of persisting through and beyond the endless cycle of cruelty which humankind continues to inflict upon itself. He’s too honest to promise a happy ending. But his mastery of language, narrative pacing, and nuanced characterization make Children of the Wild a testament to the redemptive power of beauty even in the midst of inescapable tragedy.”
—Chapter 16 (read full review)

“Powers reinvents himself yet again. This time with a love story set at the dawn of the twentieth century, in which the son of a powerful family and his penniless best friend seek the hand of an enchanting young woman. Taking us from the lush mountains of Virginia to the battlefields of France, Children of the Wild reminds us of the best works of Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood.”
—Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust and The Son

“Kevin Powers has been quietly and methodically building a body of work that will rank him at the very head of his profession. I was captivated by The Yellow Birds, his first novel, but with his latest, Children of the Wild, he has raised the bar and shows the maturity of a seasoned writer ever more confident of his skills and subjects. The three dominant characters in the story set around World War I are Ennis, Roy and Samantha. Each are so well developed they alone could carry most novels. The fact that these three deeply carved bits of humanity occupy the same story is the reader’s vast good fortune. You will take away many elements from the novel, but what struck me above all else was that Powers never falters in the belief in his creations’ flawed humanity, the power of raw goodness, and the fact that redemption is open to any who genuinely seek it. It is a wonderful, poignant novel that deserves to be on as many shelves and reside in as many hearts as possible. I am proud to call him a fellow Virginian.”
—David Baldacci, New York Times bestselling author of Nash Falls