Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on. The other girls at school call Linda 'Freak', or 'Commie'. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE How far would you go to belong? Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.īook Description Hardcover. Winner of the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for its first chapter, Emily Fridlund’s propulsive and gorgeously written History of Wolves introduces a new writer of enormous range and talent. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death conse-quences of the things people do-and fail to do-for the people they love. Over the course of a summer, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. But with this new sense of belonging come expectations and secrets she doesn’t understand. Grierson is faced with child pornography charges, his arrest deeply affects Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong.Īnd then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a baby-sitter for their little boy, Paul.

Isolated at home and an outsider at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and the new history teacher, Mr. Teenage Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counterculture world. Al Woodworth, The Amazon Book Review From the Back Cover: A remarkable novel, that just so happens to be a debut, by a fiercely talented writer. Fridlund masterfully ratchets up the tension, exploding this story of secrets and girlhood with crisp, cutting prose that will leave you shocked and in awe. Outside of school, Linda begins to spend time with a young boy and his mother who moved into a house across the lake, but their family, like her teacher, are not as they appear. But her life of solitude cracks open when her history teacher-whom she fantasizes about-is charged with child pornography. Linda is a loner, a teenage girl who walks to school and lives on a failed commune in the woods.

There is a constant sense of foreboding, of wondering when the truth will crash through the Minnesota ice. It’s propulsive, vividly written, laced with a razor’s chill and filled with imagery that’s impossible to forget. An Amazon Best Book of January 2017: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund is exactly the kind of book you want to curl up with in the winter.