A couple of summers ago, I was rummaging through a bookstore in northern Wisconsin and found a dog-eared copy of ecologist and writer Sigurd Olson’s “The Singing Wilderness.”

I’d been to the BWCA the year before and I flipped the book right open to Olson’s gorgeous words about it.  “The singing wilderness,” he wrote, “... has to do with the calling of loons, northern lights, and the great silences of a land lying north and northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life which is close to the past."

That will resonate with explorer and writer Cal Flyn.   

In her terrific new book “The Savage Landscape” she examines how we experience wilderness – even though so much of it is contained by borders; She climbs mountains, plunges into forests and walks into deserts to interrogate how we mythologize wilderness and where and how we choose to preserve it.  

She writes:  “....there is no obvious visual marker that announces one’s arrival in a wilderness…and thus the search never truly ends….”

“Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” That’s what every bottle of shampoo recommends. But if you follow the directions, you might experience “the shampoo effect” – when even a tiny bit of shampoo the second go-round produces huge suds because it’s been added to mostly clean hair.

Sometimes, it only takes a tiny addition to cause an oversized reaction.

This is the moral at the heart of the summer hit (and Read with Jenna Book Club Pick), “The Shampoo Effect.” The story follows Caroline Lash, a young writer from New York City, as she takes a fellowship in a small town in Massachusetts and falls in love with flannel-wearing, outdoor-adventuring, good- natured Van Whittaker.

She’s unwittingly thrust into Van’s tight-knit group of friends who’ve grown up together, but she doesn’t fit in. When Van’s on-again, off-again girlfriend finds out she’s pregnant, the group’s delicate dynamic is thrown off, and Caroline is pushed out. What she does with her fury and heartbreak is the pivot point at the center of “The Shampoo Effect,” so I won’t spoil it.

But I will tell you this is the perfect summer read, especially if you (like me) are a parent. The friendship group in “The Shampoo Effect” is walking the precipice between carefree youth and care-taking adulthood. I loved how author Jenny Jackson effortlessly wove scenes of parenting babies, toddlers and young kids through her summer-soaked novel. So many beach reads are centered on singles.

It was refreshing to read about a group of friends who are navigating the journey between partying and diaper changes, with all the competing emotions that come with times of transition. “The Shampoo Effect” is frothy and funny and deep when you least expect it – the rare beach read that you’ll be thinking about even when the leaves start to change.