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Book Reviewed by:After a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed.
Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her blind daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries and confusion about her feelings for Louis, a veteran and widower harboring his own secrets and guilt. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her marine husband's deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all.
As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community.
The main theme here is "how very long the reach of war turns out to be," as Naema puts it. I found a few of the coincidental connections between characters a bit hard to believe, and thought the book might have packed more punch if the collisions of characters and subplots had been allowed to get even darker at the end. However, the novel is a powerful picture of the limits of compassion and the knee-jerk nature of emotions: prejudice directed against immigrants and the fear of wolves...continued
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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
In Helen Benedict's novel Wolf Season, a character illegally keeps pet wolves behind a fence on her upstate New York property. At first her neighbors don't believe she actually has wolves – they think it's just a rumor passed around by children – but when they realize the wolves are real they become alarmed and look for legal means to address the situation.
Throughout history, attempts have been made to domesticate wolves to help with certain human activities, such as pulling sleds, serving as hunting dogs, or working as police dogs. Wolves and wolf–dog hybrids may seem like appealing pets for animal-lovers, but there are some serious reasons why owning a wolf should not be considered a valid alternative to owning a ...
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[Helen Benedict] has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and provocative writers of war literature.
David Abrams, author of Fobbit and Brave Deeds, at the Quivering Pen
