Little Wolves

by Thomas Maltman

A tragic act of violence echoes through a small Minnesota town

Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that’s pushing family farms to the brink, Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor’s wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own. A penetrating look at small-town America from the award-winning author of The Night Birds, Little Wolves weaves together elements of folklore and Norse mythology while being driven by a powerful murder mystery; a page-turning literary triumph.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Book Club, Thriller, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Horror

335 pages, Hardcover

First published November 27, 2012

About the author

I am the oldest of twenty-six cousins and the child of an Air Force pilot. Our family lived everywhere from Lubbock, Texas to Stuttgart Air Force Base in Germany. I learned to love travel and love the stories of these places, their history and lore. These loves would serve me well when it came time to write a novel.

I am married to a Lutheran pastor and live in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. I have three young daughters, who are the center of my life. I am fortunate to be teaching composition and creative writing at Normandale Community College.

Reviews

[Jaidee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 "Midwestern prairie gothic" stars!!!

2016 Honorable Mention Read

I was immensely impressed by this sophomore novel by Mr. Maltman.

There are so many interweaving themes and all of them dark. This takes place in southern Minnesota in the prairies where all four seasons are strong and powerful. Farmers, preachers, coyotes, wolves, murder, myths, torture, dreams and a light sprinkling of the supernatural all are present in this atmospheric, nebulous and intriguing literary novel.

I am purposely going to keep this review short as I do not want to give anything away.

I highly recommend this as a Halloween read that is dark, literary and will infiltrate your slumber not with nightmares but with disturbing dreams coming from the darkest reaches of your unconscious.

Don't forget to say your prayers and keep your spouse or lover close ;)

[Annet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book, and my 50th this year! Made the challenge...

Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that's pushing family farms to the brink, Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor's wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town to seek her mysterious roots. A penetrating look at small-town America weaves together elements of folklore and Norse mythology....

A poetic read, well written and a brooding dark story that draws you in from the start. Great read & recommended.

Part allegory, part mystery and pure poetry, layered with Norse mythology and Anglo Saxon narratives, Maltmann's second novel is dark, redemptive and very beautiful... Minneapilos Star-Tribune

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maltman's Little Wolves is a fast-paced, haunting story. It is comparable to a southern gothic, transpiring instead in the 1980's Minnesota prairie. Norse legends, including Valkyries, Beowulf, and Ragnarok preside over the plot of this work which takes place in a town full of German descendants. One of the main characters, Clara Warren, is a linguist; the author takes advantage of this fact to sporadically delve into the etymology of Old English and German words which helps illustrate the deeper meaning behind what has happened in Lone Mountain. Combining myth and reality, past and present, Maltman has composed a dark and memorable story about the inhabitants of a fated mid-western town. This story is both sad and beautiful; it realistically balances the struggles of a grieving father, a burdened priest, a restless, expectant mother, and a willful townsfolk.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Minnesota prairies, wolves and coyotes, religion and dark secrets spanning generations, a pregnant and lonely preacher's wife, Beowulf, hog pits, an incomprehensible murder committed by a child. This book has it all.

It's beautiful and haunting. I loved the writing, how the author developed the tone and place, as well as the characters (some of the elderly women described were downright terrifying!). But I loved the wolves especially, those dangerous, sentient, somewhat magical beings.

[Dem · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Little Wolves by Thomas Maltman is a haunting, dark tale and a powerful murder mystery. I don’t normally read murder mystery novels but when I do they have to have that little bit extra to keep me interested and the fantasia of myth and folklore had me from page one.

Lately I have been doing most of my reading on Kindle and am really enjoying the experience. But Little Wolves was a hardback book that I bought and boy the experience of holding and reading a novel like this really enhanced the whole reading experience. I really love a hardback and when I see a good book recommendation, I love to treat myself to a copy for my bookshelf.

The author, Thomas Maltman, begins his story with a dark myth about a half-starved wolf that finds and then suckles a human baby abandoned on the prairie.
The story is Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that's pushing family farms to the brink, Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor's wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own.

The writing is so haunting and imaginative and I found myself transported to the Minnesota Prairie with the beautiful and sometime scary descriptions.
The characters are extremely well developed and all are complicated and most not very likable. The plot has so many twists and turns that the reader is constantly on the edge of the couch.

I loved this haunting and magical story but I know that this book is not for everybody as some readers will find it dark and strange. But for me truly a memorable read and a captivating story.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set on the Minnesota prairie, in 1980, this novel opens with an horrendous act and a father who needs and wants answers. The tone from the beginning is ominous and the story just pulled me in and kept me there. Small town, life, farms that are failing, a preacher's wife who has ties to the place but doesn't really understand how or why she has been drawn there. A father who told his daughter stories of wolves and mythology, Beowolf, wolves, coyotes, what do they all mean and where does the evil begin and end? Sensitive characters that are attuned to their environment, a reckoning, revenge, so many parts to this novel. The setting is stark, somewhat barren, the writing crisp as the reader seeks to understand what is happening in this town. Apparently this author has a previous book that I now very much want to read.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am quite frankly flabbergasted by all of the positive reviews and recent praise for Little Wolves by Thomas Maltman. The story seemed to have multiple personalities competing for attention, without any one of those personalities successfully doing so. I suppose what was supposed to be the main storyline was that of Grizz Fallon, a father hopelessly searching for answers after his son murdered the Sherriff of their small Minnesota town, prior to walking into a cornfield and shooting himself. Competing with this story was that of the Pastor’s wife, who convinced her husband to move to the small town that her father lived in so many years ago to learn more about her mother. While these stories were supposed to be linked considering the woman formed an odd relationship with the boy Seth prior to the murder, the relationship seemed more than a little forced. As if the tenuous thread between these story lines wasn’t confusing enough, add in a focus on Norse mythology, as well as a fixation on a pack of “little wolves” running around town (somewhat of a misnomer, considering the “wolves” were really just coyotes).

I know all the elements of the story were supposed to blend together in some sort of cohesive fashion – and I guess they did for some people considering the high praise, but they just weren’t meshing together as they should have been for me. I am undeniably not well versed in Norse mythology. I’m not sure if being more informed in that area would have added to my enjoyment of this book or not – I suppose it is possible. However, it is my opinion that appreciation for a piece of fiction targeted at the general public should not be contingent upon expert knowledge in a given area. In this case, I think the author bit off more than he could chew, and the parts of the story that should have been most interesting (for example, understanding why Seth committed murder) were sorely underdeveloped. The ending was anticlimactic, and the novel more or less sputtered out rather than reaching a grand crescendo.

I’d love to hear the opposing positions of those who actually enjoyed this book, but I cannot under any circumstances recommend it myself.

Final Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

My heart always sinks when I open a novel and the first page is in italics. This usually indicates that we're going to get some evocative flashback or a dream or the secret thoughts of someone deranged. In Little Wolves it's a private fiction, a folk tale in the making. It was only after I'd read a few more pages that I realized that the novel itself was a kind of folk tale, set in a small town in Minnesota, a Prairie Home Gothic.

The novel doesn't quite live up to its materials and characters, but I mean this as a slant compliment, not a criticism. There is a wealth of reference here – everything from Beowulf to Lutheran theology and tragic teenage shooters. Clara, the main character, a lonely Latin teacher's daughter, a pregnant pastor's wife, the determined survivor of a murdered mother, is a fine creation. Unfortunately the other characters, especially the villains, are not nearly as strong. The plot doesn't quite deliver. But there is a depth to the world Maltman has conjured that kept me reading and earned my appreciation.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lush and complex book that is thoroughly entertaining. I could recommend this for anyone, Steven King fans should also consider it. This is rich in folklore, even covers a good bit of Beowolf. I classify this as a mystery/thriller. With each detail added to the story, the mystery increases.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really like this author's writing. I like the storyline and the uncertainty of the characters. Interesting how the folklore was mixed in to plot. Note to self:mention of a Sineater (count up to 3) I look forward to reading his earlier work.

[LeAnn Suchy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally reviewed at Minnesota Reads.

I have been waiting for another book by Thomas Maltman ever since I read his first novel The Night Birds. Ten pages in, I was mesmerized by the descriptions of locusts crunching under boots in the Minnesota summer of 1876. In The Night Birds, Maltman told a beautiful story, surrounding a tragic event in our past, with grace, a flawless recount of history, and beautiful, sometimes haunting, detailed descriptions. Maltman, who studied as a poet, has a gift for detail and I’m happy to report that this gift is just as strong in his latest novel, Little Wolves.

Little Wolves takes place in the mid-1980s in the small, fictitious town of Lone Mountain, Minnesota, where residents are still dealing with transgressions from their past. The story begins with a gruesome murder-suicide by a troubled teen. What follows is how his father, Grizz, and a school teacher he admired, Clara, cope with the aftermath and reveal town and personal secrets in this beautiful literary thriller.

I say literary thriller because I raced through this novel, but it’s not a page turner in the typical sense. This is a character driven, emotional look at small town life with characters struggling to answer why and looking to the past for resolution. It’s full of folklore, mythology, mystery, and even a little bit of magical realism, and I loved it.

One thing I loved was the setting. Maltman captures the farms, hills, and beauty of southern Minnesota, but shows the stark contrast between this beauty and the dark underbelly of living in a small, isolated town with a long, dark history. In the town we see how gun culture is strong and gun ownership is instilled in boys at a young age. We see older residents assuming new residents know who they are. We see the gossip spread by nosy, judgmental, church-going individuals. We see how tightly connected residents in small towns are, in both good and bad ways. This town, its landscape and residents, was so real.

Another thing I loved were the believable characters. Clara is new to town and searching for a connection to her past through folklore her father told her. She struggles with wanting to know the past yet uncertain about what it may mean. Grizz struggles with the same thing, though he is more damaged than Clara. It’s clear from the beginning that his past is dark and we slowly find out why he is whispered about in town. These characters are flawed and make bad, irrational decisions, yet they are good people.

This really is a beautiful, chilling read. At times I got goose bumps, other times I gasped, and I often felt sympathy for these characters. With all revealed in the end, this is the type of novel I want to immediately read again with new, enlightened eyes.

I know it’s only January, but I think I can safely say that this will be one of my favorite reads of 2013. You should put Maltman on your list of must-read authors and grab this one.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://more2read.com/review/little-wolves-by-thomas-maltman/

This story emerges from a town in a wilderness, a small community struck with a death that unearths many dark secrets that lie amongst kin and a community framework. In this town everybody thinks they know everything about everybody, but time will show that there are many lies and things that have happened with darker truths behind them and that maybe only a few are aware of as they insidiously show themselves.
Amongst the preconceived opinions and prejudices this community has, like many other have in any community setting, there are more forces at work that don't exist in a realistic non-fiction world.
As one father tries to uncover and revisit his sons footsteps pre-incident he finds that there is more questions needing answering, many others start dropping clues and answers he finds himself uncovering a history and a present reality that most people would like kept hidden. This is what hooks the reader in this enjoyable captivating thriller with mythical elements.


As the story unfolded i felt there was a few places where matters needed more elaboration as some answers were thrown at you and I felt they would have worked with more depth in explaining their How and Why.

The story was written with a great sense of place and memorable characters.
An ambitious feat to take on, mixing many elements of a storytelling: thrill, literal, and the mythical kind, the author pulled it off successfully with characters that go through prejudices, lies, trust, loss, parenthood, love and forgiveness.

"loup garou"

"She set the dictionary down on the bottom stair and knelt beside the kittens. They had exchanged the warm seas of their mother for this cold ground, this blinding light. The cries they made were the cries of any newborn thing. This is what she discovered two nights after the murder: In birth all things are kindred, the sounds we make universal to any species. We enter wailing of a lost world."

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is prairie gothic a thing? I think it’s a thing! Midwestern mystery that weaves in Norse mythology, religion and a family saga of suffering and sad dads.

I really enjoyed the story line and the writing and the coyotes (!) but I felt like something was missing. Perhaps I wish it were longer and more of the central crime was explained.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

***I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway***

This was a fabulous book. It was a very dark story about a current event and several from the past, but somehow the author was able to keep the tone light in a way that didn’t allow the book as a whole to feel disheartening. The book was filled with many different stories: folklore and legend, a little girl’s imagination, mythology, families feuding for generations, ancient literature, and modern day religion. I especially enjoyed the references to word origins and appreciated that they did not occur too often and were not long in length. This book was a perfect mix of fiction, mystery and psychological thriller. I am definitely interested in reading the author’s first novel!

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a book where fuck all happens from page 30 to page 300 this book really impressed me and kept my attention and I have no idea why.

Honestly literally nothing happens for over 90% of the book except all the characters get into strange conversations with each other and spend most of the book having inner monologues about how sad and depressed they are.

No idea why I loved it but I did and I would recommend it ✌🏻

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was compared in print to Haruf and to William Kent Krueger. I don't see the resemblance. Especially to Krueger who writes within a core (even for the most distressed and off characters) of good intent to the wider human possibilities that do exist. Both of them also write plainly. This is not plain writing. It's fancy.

It's 2.5 star but I cannot round it up. My enjoyment factor was 2. It's dismal, and the Gothic aspect didn't work for me at all. His wolves are really coyotes? Why? Wolves and coyotes have extremely different habits. Coyotes live most of their lives solo. The analogy with wolves was crooked in this one too. Way too much going on that doesn't jive for one novel.

Clara was well defined dismal, but his men characters seem like cliched gloom, without any joy or hope and primarily cored upon obsession for past expected and accepted rejections.

This book has been noted as "literary". For me it wasn't. It didn't hang together as MN, as a mystery. And it certainly never haunted me in any aspect. Gothic? No, scattered creepy. This is a style of writing with poetry and at times verbose misdirection that doesn't work for me.

It seems to have worked for others. The high marks on this one surprise me.

Seth was especially problematic. His motives for the murder vastly under developed.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books this year. Beautiful writing.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We've been waiting for you, Judas," Jesus said. "We couldn't begin till you came." Madeleine L'Engle, "Waiting for Judas"

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

[Mike Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Little Wolves' is a bleak, dark, book, permeated with a sense of inevitable doom. It's filled with violence, abuse, death, deception, torture and oppression. The writing style felt a little self-consciously literary at times and seemed to be reaching for a deeper meaning beneath the story which I wasn't convinced by. The narrative is deeply, sometimes disturbingly, realistic but is laced with references to Norse myths, the nature of monsters and the heroes who battle them, the inescapability of fate and a belief in the reality-shaping power of storytelling.

Set in a small, failing town on the Minnesota prairies in 1987, it starts with a troubled teenager shooting the local sheriff with a sawn-off shotgun and follows the impact the killing has on the boy's father and the boy's teacher. The teacher is the preacher's wife, newly arrived, newly married, newly pregnant, haunted by old myths learned from her father about her absent-since-her-birth mother and hungry to discover her origins and root herself. The father of the boy is a struggling local farmer, widower and social outcast with a long-standing enmity with the sheriff. Both the main characters are outsiders with complicated views of the world, and trauma in their past that has twisted their belief in their agency over their own lives.

This is not a conventional drama where the reader is focused on working out how the hero will overcome overwhelming odds and right all the wrongs. Here, the heroes seem cursed, doomed to come face to face with monsters who will do them harm. Hope is replaced by stubborn endurance. Righting wrongs is replaced by the possibility of survival.

The town and the people in it are, for the most part, deeply unpleasant and entirely believable. The violence and anger and oppression that sits just beneath the surface of the social life of this failing town owes nothing to the supernatural and everything to a culture hierarchical culture dominated by violent men and sustained by a consensual silence about how the town works and a collective investment in an alternative narrative in which everything is fine.

There were points in this book when I became completely absorbed in the writing and in the disclosed pasts of the two main characters but there were other points when I felt that it was over-written and over-structured. It reminded me of one of those neo-gothic Scottish Baronial style castles that the Victorians built, look at them one feature at a time and you can admire each turret, medieval arch and mullioned window but when you look at the building as a whole it lacks authenticity.

I got the sense that Thomas Maltman has a strong dislike of rural, Lutheran-dominated small towns and the gap between how life works and how it is described. This book seemed like a way of taking a fresh look at the things he dislikes.

[KJ Grow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began reading this book on the same morning that a gunman opened fire outside the Empire State Building, and the shootings in Aurora, Colorado were fresh in my mind. So this book, which opens with a scene of seemingly senseless violence, resonated strongly with me, and felt even a little raw. Still, the lyrical writing and the atmospheric setting compelled me to read on. I spent time in Minnesota during my college years, and was raised among Scandinavian/German stock in the Lutheran Church - so these characters are very much my people, and Maltman knows them well.

Our two protagonists are complex, ultimately caring people in terribly troubling situations. Clara is a pastor's wife, perhaps a bit too educated for her new small town environs, who has more faith in the folklore and pagan stories once told to her by her father than she does in the doctrines and rituals of the church. Grizz is a single father to a son who has committed a murder, and a member of a family whose lineage has inspired nothing but hatred in his community for generations. Both of them, trying to do the right thing, stumble unwittingly into the muck of past sins and the judgment of everyone around them.

This is a gorgeous, but chilling read. At different moments I thought of Jane Smiley and Kent Haruf for the quality of the writing and the depictions of rural Midwest, and at others I thought of movies like "Winter's Bone" and "There Will Be Blood" for the Shakespearean sense of family rivalry and resentment, and the Biblical sense of revenge and redemption that pervade this book.

I hope many new readers discover Maltman with "Little Wolves". He's a real talent.

[Luke Franklin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has a lot going for it, though not nearly a gothic version of Haruf's work, which seems the most commmon touchstone for reviewers/blurb-ers. It's more: Prairie Home Companion (Linguists and Lutherans!) does 80s Metal Murder Ballad (Ragnarok!) I wish Maltman hadn't thanked is editor so profusely in his author's note, cause a good editor could've pointed out a lot of the problems and cut out some of ridiculous genre cliches thyat undermine the tone of stark mysterious earnestness. There's way too much mess here (North European pagan mythology, American mythologizing (Longfellow's Hiawatha), Christianity, cryptotaxidermy), unconvincing relationships (ah yes, of course the insistently agnostic Old English doctoral student falls for the young Lutheran pastor, even though they can't seem to communicate on anything (and despite his seminary training apparently knows no Greek, even when really relevant to Christianity)), and plot lines that don't leave "unanswered questions," as I can picture Maltman instructing his students to do, but gaping holes. That said, I read the damn thing in a day, and mostly just want it to be better than it is. It could be.

[Aaron Cance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I'm unable to give Thomas Maltman's second book the four and a half star rating I'd like to, on account of the limitations of the rating system on the website, it's a strong enough book that the decision to waver in one direction or another was clear and easy, and I'm left with no choice but to give him five. The ultra-cool and creepy Little Wolves was the perfect chiller for the weeks just preceding Halloween, and gave the gift that very few books in its genre can offer the contemporary reader, jaded as he or she might be by the gratuitous onslaught of sex and violence, and the rudimentary plot repetition that plagues modern thrillers: something fresh.

Maltman's masterful blend of intelligent psychological suspense and Norse mythology, splashed across the agrarian Minnesota countryside like spattered blood in the weeds, offers readers the delicious sensation of authentic fear as the story of small town, teen-rage-fueled murder unfolds on both main street and dark corn field corners.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mystery that got some very positive reviews, Little Wolves tells the story of a young wife and mother-to-be who convinces her pastor husband to take a job in Lone Mountain, MN because she is sure that this is the area where her mother disappeared. The facts of her mother's disappearance are not clear to her; she dreams about wolves or coyotes or both, and being born covered with hair and rescued from freezing to death by a group of mysterious wolves or coyotes, which she seems to equate somehow. She is also preoccupied by Beowulf and old English vocabulary, and ghosts. She teaches at the local high school, where she befriends a lonely boy who also lost his mother. She adopts a litter of kittens. She finally finds out a bit more about her mother, and then there is a murder, and various other incidents, including somebody falling into a hole filled with deadly pig sh-t. No kidding.

I didn't think the mystery was much of a mystery, and I thought the semi-occult wolf/coyote thing was dumb.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine, an "All Iowa Reads" book that I actually liked! This one was more mystery than I was expecting, even as I got quite a way into the story. And to be honest, I was a bit annoyed that coyotes were called 'Little Wolves', but by the end, I understood why. The story is set in Minnesota. A young man commits a violent act and the whole community reels under what's happened, not the least of whom is his father. As the story unfolds all is slowly revealed and the ending is more than just a little shocking. This should make a great Book Club discussion this coming May!

[Erica Sage · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite adult books I've ever read. It's fast-paced and haunting, atmospheric and mythical. If anyone asks me for a book recommendation, this is the book I offer first.

[casey (ink drinker) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent novel with a haunting and moving prose. The story is almost secondary to the lyrical language and mood that is created. Beautifully written, and filled with snippets of mysterious mythological analogies, the story starts with a seemingly unrelated piece of folk legend, but it pays to take notice of this at the beginning, as it is far from superfluous to the story. This small town on a Minnesota prairie has a malevolent force that has developed over generations of blame and revenge and self righteous judgements that have brought a series of tragedies that engulf everyone. A wonderful combination of mystery, myth, and folklore. Ultimately, 'Little Wolves' is about life, death and the mysterious quality of the short span we have between the two; how the past is always with us, even in the words we use, and how the dead rise up in our memory and imagination. 4 well deserved stars.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little Wolves
by
Thomas Maltman

My " in a nutshell" summary...

A tragedy occurs in a small town and because of this lives are changed and a multitude of secrets are discovered.

My thoughts after reading this book...

This is one of those tremendous tragic novels that only truly gifted storytellers can master. It's a story of tragedy and sadness that mesmerized me as the reader. It's the kind of horror and nightmarish tragedy that can not even begin to enter our imaginations. This book is sad and graphic and filled with animals and stories. I am a person who cannot bear to see or read or hear about an animal that is cold or sad or hungry. This book had all of that but had such a tremendously powerful story that I plunged on.

This is about a father and son family unit. They do the best they can and yet the son makes a horrible choice with disastrous results. Grizz...the father...needs to know why. In this quest all of the other secrets and stories begin to unravel. Clara...the young pastor's pregnant wife... is involved in ways she can't even imagine. But she is an integral part of this unravelling. Old stories, coyotes, truths and half truths all play a role in this sometimes surreal novel.

Whew!

What I loved about this book...

I was so tortured by Seth...Grizz's tragic son. Clara's role was fascinating, too. I knew from the start that she was a key player but I wasn't sure how or why. That again is the mastery of this writer. The ending of this book is phenomenal. Oh...I loved all of the coyote stories, too.

What I did not love...

I was always afraid for the animals...the bull, the cows, the kittens, the coyotes...I wish I could tell you more about them but that would spoil the story.

Final thoughts...

I believe this novel to be one of the great ones...haunting story, flawed characters, evil...pure evil in a small town. Pretty much a must read in my book!

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about darkness, evil, wild things lurking in the shadows, the original monster that rises up to claim us. Woven into this murder mystery is the story of Beowulf and Grendel, showing us the root of our desire to quash the monsters among us and the inevitable complications in deciding who or what is monstrous and who or what is the hero.

I was impressed by the rendering of the experience of pregnancy in this novel. Maltman nails the character of Clara, pregnant throughout the novel, who experiences her unborn child as an inner voice, a wild force that communicates through kicks and turns. The child is instinct itself. An incarnation of the inner voices that show us the truth amidst brambles of deception.

The line between human and animal is blurred as well as the line between history and folklore. This is a story about liminal spaces, heaven, hell, salvation, forgiveness...all the huge and overwhelming things that make us so beautifully human. Maltman's writing is sparse and wild itself, drawing the reader into their own half-remembered wildness, and animal origins.

I had to pick back through the book in an attempt to clear up the confusion of the ending, but I think the final feeling of uncertainty and lingering mystery is intentional. I'm left feeling that I still don't have the entire story, but I think the book warrants a careful re-reading to turn up more clues. I probably won't have the time for that, but I wish I did!

[Lisa B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 of 5

My Thoughts

Mesmerizing!

I picked this up to just read a few chapters to get a feel for the book and see if I thought I would like it. Before I knew it, I was half way thru and did not want to put it down.

The author’s writing is so lyrical and descriptive. There is that undertone of evil that really drew me in and the pages just flew. This was one of those books where you tend to block out everything that is going on around you. I got so wrapped up in the story that I feel like I just came back from a mini vacation for my brain. Hot dog!

This is Mr. Maltman’s second book. I have no doubt that I will be reading his first and watching for future new releases.

I thank Soho Press and Netgalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an unbiased review.

Publish date: January 8, 2012.

[Joel U · Rating 5 out of 5]

I imagine one of the more difficult tasks for an author is to create an intriguing mythology within their fictional universe. This novel revolves around such a mythology, from which a rich mystery emerges along with a powerful romance between human and nature.

Upon a moment's reflection, I'm surprised to find myself ascribing the label of mystery to the genre. Roughly 3/4 way through I realized that indeed, I had been caught up in such, but it was the portrayal and development of the characters, as well as some really inspired moments of imagery that had carried me to that point.

I'll be adding Maltman's preceding work to my reading list and looking forward to reading more!