Karma Brown’s novel “What Wild Women Do” is the story of two women who share the same space, physically and psychologically, almost 50 years apart.

In 2021, would-be screenwriter Rowan rents a cabin in the Adirondacks. With Rowan is her fiance, Seth, who has been recording their relationship on YouTube, sharing the young couple’s romantic and professional dreams and disappointments. He is marketing their lives, hoping to gather enough subscribers to make a living while he, supposedly, works on his novel. The couple’s exploration of a nearby abandoned Adirondack camp, and each other, is one story.

The other story is Camp Calloway, within walking distance of the cabin Rowan and Seth rent, that has been vacant since 1975. One of the Adirondack Great Camps, feminist Eddie Calloway hosted women’s retreats there in the early ’70s. Local resident Glenda tells Rowan, “Camp Calloway ran these weeklong sessions during the summer months. Only for women … It was a real ’70s commune. Rumor is they even grew marijuana on the property.”

That Eddie Calloway disappeared in 1975 — having walked into the woods to hide an item for a scavenger/treasure hunt but never returned — is the thread Rowan follows that ties the two stories together. With Seth, she searches the grounds and buildings, finding notebooks and objects that both explain and expand the mystery of the camp and its feminist founder and force, Eddie Calloway.

Calloway, who counseled and comforted women struggling to find their place and voice in the male-dominated 1970s America, is a compelling character. Her philosophy, her relationship with friend Judith and lover Sam, and the sanctuary she created echo those turbulent times. (Lorraine Duvall’s “Finding A Woman’s Place,” reviewed March 2020, in the ADE, revisited a women’s Adirondack commune.)

The mystery that connects Calloway and Rowan — what happened to the treasure and Eddie that summer day in 1975 — is revealed, and then an interesting twist is added.

Karma Brown gives us Eddie’s story in the third person, and Rowan’s in the first. In this way, Rowan’s thoughts about her career and Seth are part of the backdrop for her exploration of the strong Eddie Calloway. And Calloway’s feminist voice changes Rowan’s perspective, and she finally gives up on the self-absorbed Seth: “I’ve been wasting my own precious time, shifting my focus to meeting Seth’s needs. Pretending it doesn’t matter which one of us finds success, as long as one of us does.”

“What Wild Women Do” is a good read, recalling those sex-role transitional years, locating them in the Adirondacks.