Campfire Reads Review: History of Wolves
“ I try to remember how the woods looked to me when I was younger. I know better than to be wistful. It was never magical to me .”
Author: Emily Fridlund
Goodreads Description: [Linda] is an outsider in all things. Her understanding of the world comes from watching the seemingly ordinary life of a family she babysits for…As Linda insinuates her way into the family's orbit, she realizes they are hiding something. If she tells the truth, she will lose the normal family life she is beginning to enjoy with them; but if she doesn't, their son may die.
Any book that tackles the subject of child abuse is bound to be troubling, and at times, hard to read. So, in an effort to not give away any spoilers, I won’t directly discuss the novel’s central tragedy, but I might allude to it.
Contrary to its title, this book is not about wolves. Rather, the title is in reference to a class presentation that the main character, Linda, gives about the history of wolves. I’m sure I could come up with some kind of metaphor behind the wolf motif –like it represents loss of innocence or man’s inhumanity to man or something equally contrived– but I won’t. As far as I’m concerned, the wolves are simply an effective medium for the desolate atmosphere of the novel.
“ I remembered the first time I’d seen that [taxidermied] wolf as a kid, how the feeling went beyond love, how it made me hungry, hungry, hungry. But Paul had no interest in the wolf at all… all he had to say was, ‘That’s not real.’ ”
The setting itself contributed to the feeling of isolation in the book. Linda and her parents live in a cabin in the northern Minnesota woods that used to be part of a hippie commune. Their only neighbors are the Gardner family who move in across the lake from them, and with no one else to talk to, Linda soon becomes preoccupied with the family's goings-on.
“Who’s watching who? I wondered, when I… saw the telescope across the lake aimed straight at my parents’ cabin… I felt my scalp prickle.”
Linda’s scalp was right. There was something amiss in the Gardner household that she would discover later, a secret that was easier to hide out in the forest than in a city. It’s almost as if the woods were somehow complicit in what happened to the Gardner’s son, Paul. It hid him from any witnesses who might have sounded an alarm on his behalf. His only real hope was Linda, and even she had to take a canoe to get to him (a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed by Mrs. Gardner).
“Good grief, Linda. I saw you coming across the lake, I watched you and thought–I had this thought–she’s come to rescue us, that girl in her boat.”
I won’t get any further into the specifics of what happens to Paul. I suggest you read it for yourself and find out. Overall, the novel had a nice slow burn, and the setting complimented the dark subject matter well. I tend to think of forests as beautiful, but History of Wolves shows us that even beautiful places can have ugly secrets.
