Wolf Note

by Libby Jacobs

The nine stories in the debut collection, WOLF NOTE, thrust the reader into diverse worlds from San Francisco in the 1940's to the tangled imagination of a delusional adolescent in a contemporary mental ward, introducing characters with compassion, humor, and nuanced psychological insight. In "Egg Money" Sandra Mae Evans, "her wedding ring gone except for a thin, untanned stripe of skin encircling her ring finger like a half-exorcised ghost," sits under a too-hot hairdryer in a sleepy Midwest town's only beauty parlor and hatches a plot to gain independence from her philandering husband. A high school girl saves a friend -- but loses a friendship -- when they sneak out to attend a fraternity party, which "gave Greek letters the mystique of incantations that might transmute us from girls into women." In a revival meeting tent, where "the chairs were stenciled with 'Blaughman's Funeral Home' on the back and fat women all around me waved egg-shaped cardboard fans courtesy of the same sad business," a precocious ten-year-old learns that what passes as religion is sometimes as superficial as the shiny paint on the pearls she bought at the five-and-dime store.

73 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2006

Reviews

[Shellie Hipsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one spins a tale quite like author Libby Jacobs. The characters and plot lines draw the reader into each short story in this magnificent collection. The subtle nuances and well-developed story lines make her readers long for Jacobs to publish a full novel. Wolf Note is no doubt a brilliant read!

[Pamela Anderson-Bartholet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of short stories since my mother gave me a used copy of Guy de Maupassant many decades ago.

This fantastic book of short stories re-confirmed my appreciation for this art form/writing style.

Every one of the women featured in the stories became very real to me. I loved that they claim their lives as their own ("Egg Money")...that they struggle but find ways to succeed ("Repossession")... that they adjust their lives in smart ways ("Still Life")...that they are flawed but, sometimes in unexpected and tragic ways, triumphant.

Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down.