History of wolves A novel

Emily Fridlund

Book - 2015

""So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!"-Aimee Bender. Fourteen-year-old 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 counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and crav...ing to belong. And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose but with this new sense of belonging she is also drawn into secrets she doesn't understand. Over the course of a few days, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death consequences of the things people do-and fail to do-for the people they love. 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"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press 2015.
Language
English
Main Author
Emily Fridlund (author)
Edition
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition
Physical Description
279 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780802125873
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

HITLER: Ascent 1889-1939, by Volker Ullrich. Translated by Jefferson Chase. (Vintage, $22.) A new biography dispenses with myths of greatness and destiny that circulate about Hitler: In Ullrich's telling, he emerges as a mediocre, unremarkable man who seized on a moment of political rage to rise to power. This book, the first of two planned volumes, ends on the eve of Germany's invasion of Poland, setting off World War II and eventually leading to his downfall. PERFECT LITTLE WORLD, by Kevin Wilson. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $16.99.) Izzy, a teenager pregnant with her teacher's baby, agrees to join a utopian family experiment that resembles a commune. "It's a novel you keep reading for old-fashioned reasons," our reviewer, John Irving, said. "You also keep reading because you want to know what a good family is. Everyone wants to know that." TRUEVINE: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South, by Beth Macy. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.99.) George and Willie Muse, two albino African-American brothers, were exhibited in a circus for years during the 20 th century, a situation close to slavery. How they came to join the show is murky, but the core of Macy's reporting focuses on the boys' mother, Harriett, who doggedly sought to bring them home. HISTORY OF WOLVES, by Emily Fridlund. (Grove, $16.) In Fridlund's debut novel, northern Minnesota's austere landscape sets off a grim coming-of-age story. When a young mother and her son arrive in town, Linda, a teenage loner with a fractured home life, is drawn to them. She soon begins babysitting the child, Paul, and finds herself in an ambiguous family dynamic, made worse after his father returns from Hawaii; the moral choices Linda makes haunt her decades later, when she finally tells her story. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: A Love Story, by John Kaag. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) A chance encounter leads Kaag, a philosophy professor, to a library full of masterpieces (early editions of works by Kant, signed copies of Thoreau's writings), transforming his professional and personal trajectories. Our reviewer, Mark Greif, praised the memoir as "a spirited lover's quarrel with the individualism and solipsism in our national thought." DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING, by Madeleine Thien. (Norton, $16.95.) As a child, Marie, the central figure of Thien's novel, and her mother welcome into their home a woman fleeing China after the Tiananmen Square protests. The guest, AnLing, and Marie are linked by their fathers: The men used music to cope with the regime and to remain steadfast to each another during the Cultural Revolution.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 12, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Fraught with foreboding, Fridlund's first novel is the story of 14-year-old Linda, who lives with her erstwhile cult-member parents in a cabin in the northern Minnesota woods. When new neighbors, the Gardners, move into their summer cottage across the lake, Linda becomes babysitter for their five-year-old son and an increasingly large presence in their lives and they in hers. In the meantime, her new history teacher, Mr. Grierson, has been found to possess child pornography and is fired, but not before he has an alleged affair with one of Linda's classmates, the beautiful Lily with whom Linda is fascinated. The novel moves backward and forward in time to good effect, showing us the enigmatic adult Linda will become. The isolated setting reinforces a theme of loneliness that pervades the book and lends it an often bleak, even desolate, air that reinforces the uncertain, nagging knowledge that something is wrong with the Gardners. The writing is beautiful throughout (the sun broke over the treetops, turning every surface into a flat knife of light; a man is stubborn like a stain) and is a triumph of tone and attitude. Lovers of character-driven literary fiction will embrace this one.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Fridlund's stellar debut novel, 14-year-old Linda, an observant loner growing up in the Minnesota woods, becomes intrigued with the Gardners, the young family that moves in across the lake from her home. As she gets to know them, she realizes that something is amiss. Having been raised in a commune by unconventional parents, Linda is prone to provocative statements and challenging authority. She's also fascinated by the scandal that occurs when Lily Holburn, a student at her school, accuses a teacher, Adam Grierson, of inappropriate behavior but then recants her testimony. At the same time, Linda forges a friendship with the comparatively worldly Patra Gardner and her endearing four-year-old, Paul, whom Linda babysits for a summer before his sudden and mysterious death. Matters take a curious turn once Patra's husband, an older man named Leo, returns after months away at work. Fridlund expertly laces Linda's possessive protectiveness for Patra with something darker, bordering on romantic jealousy. A sense of foreboding subtly permeates the story as Fridlund slowly reveals what happened to Paul. Her wordsmithing is fantastic, rife with vivid turns of phrase. Fridlund has elegantly crafted a striking protagonist whose dark leanings cap off the tragedy at the heart of this book, which is moving and disturbing, and which will stay with the reader. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

When scandal shakes Madeline's small town, she is left feeling betrayed by her favorite teacher Mr. Grierson. Despite her curiosity about the stories flying around regarding Mr. Grierson and a classmate, Madeline tries to find ways to distract herself. She decides that the family who just moved in next door is enough to interest her and soon has a job as the babysitter, or governess as they like to say, for their four-year-old son, Paul. As time goes on, Madeline feels increasingly uneasy with the family and the situation, and her hunch proves right, as everything changes when a tragedy occurs. Susan Bennett's narration is downright creepy, as her voice captures the foreboding of the story. There is not much distinction among characters, but there is just enough variation that the narration is easy to follow. It is uncomfortable to listen to at times, but that seems to have been the author's intention. Verdict This will appeal to those who enjoy dark stories, and while some sections are slow, it will interest those who pick up on small details and like to solve mysteries.-Emma Manfred, Glastonbury, CT © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review

Winter falls hard in northern Minnesota. So 14-year-old Linda watches with interest when, months before the thaw, a young mother and her son return alone to their summer house across the lake. Linda is drawn into their lives when the mother, Patra, asks her to watch four-year-old Paul while Patra edits manuscripts. Linda is deeply affected by the intensity of Patra's care for Paul, so different from the nonchalance of her own mother. The teen is an untamed storyteller, and her past and present swing about as she interrupts one plot thread in pursuit of another, as if the emotional connections among events supersede chronology. A succession of days spent with Patra and Paul veer into a deluge of memories from Linda's childhood in a commune or recollections of her former history teacher, who may have molested a classmate. Fridlund's crystalline descriptions keep the narrative focused, but nearly everything else in the book, including Linda's true name, is subject to interpretation. The author foreshadows tragedy, which arrives with the unimaginable brutality of a Minnesotan blizzard. VERDICT Teens who appreciated the natural settings and poetic writing of Ron Rash's The World Made Straight and The Cove or the stylistic complexity of Louise Erdrich's The Round House will love this one. This strikingly original tale, so rooted in its natural setting, will captivate readers with a penchant for powerful, unorthodox prose.-Diane Colson, Librarian, City -College, Gainesville, FL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

An atmospheric, near-gothic coming-of-age novel turns on the dance between predator and prey.Fridlunds debut won the McGinnis-Ritchie Award in 2013 for its first chapter. Its a 17-page stunner that begins with a child ghost and ends in a chorus of communal condemnation. The novel itself unfurls in far northern Minnesota, where a 14-year-old named Mattie Furston, who calls herself Linda, is living on a failed commune with her parents. She's hungry in flesh and spirit, a backwoods outcast among hockey players in their yellowed caps...cheerleaders with their static-charged bangs. She chops wood and cleans fish with her father, who was kind to objects. With people he was a little afraid. When a young woman moves with her 4-year-old son into a new cabin across the lake, the teenage Linda, who's looking back on these events as an adult, is hired to babysit. Fridlund is an assured writer: she knows how water tuts against a boat hull and how mosquitoes descend into any patch of shade. Her sense of cold freezes the reader: Beneath a foot of ice, beneath my boots, the walleye drifted. They did not try to swim, or do anything that required effort. They hovered, waiting winter out with driftwood, barely beating their hearts. As dread coils around Linda, the novel gives up its secrets slowly. One concerns an eighth-grade teacher accused of owning child porn; another is tangled in the newcomer familys Christian Science. Fridlund circles these threads around each other in tightening, mesmerizing loops. The novel has a tinge of fairy tale, wavering on the blur between good and evil, thought and action. But the sharp consequences for its characters make it singe and singa literary tour de force. Four years after its initial prize, this slender work is worth the wait. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

It's not that I never think about Paul. He comes to me occasionally before I'm fully awake, though I almost never remember what he said, or what I did or didn't do to him. In my mind, the kid just plops down into my lap. Boom. That's how I know it's him: there's no interest in me, no hesitation. We're sitting in the Nature Center on a late afternoon like any other, and his body moves automatically toward mine--not out of love or respect, but simply because he hasn't yet learned the etiquette of minding where his body stops and another begins. He's four, he's got an owl puzzle to do, don't talk to him. I don't. Outside the window, an avalanche of poplar fluff floats by, silent and weightless as air. The sunlight shifts, the puzzle cleaves into an owl and comes apart again, I prod Paul to standing. Time to go. It's time. But in the second before we rise, before he whines out his protest and asks to stay a little longer, he leans back against my chest, yawning. And my throat cinches closed. Because it's strange, you know? It's marvelous, and sad too, how good it can feel to have your body taken for granted.Before Paul, I'd known just one person who'd gone from living to dead. He was Mr. Adler, my eighth-grade history teacher. He wore brown corduroy suits and white tennis shoes, and though his subject was America he preferred to talk about czars. He once showed us a photograph of Russia's last emperor, and that's how I think of him now?black bearded, tassel shouldered?though in fact Mr. Adler was always clean shaven and plodding. I was in English class when his fourth-period student burst in saying Mr. Adler had fallen. We crowded across the hall, and there he lay facedown on the floor, eyes closed, blue lips suctioning the carpet. "Does he have epilepsy?" someone asked. "Does he have pills?" We were all repulsed. The Boy Scouts argued over proper CPR techniques, while the gifted and talented kids reviewed his symptoms in hysterical whispers. I had to force myself to go to him. I crouched down and took Mr. Adler's dry-meat hand. It was early November. He was darkening the carpet with drool, gasping in air between longer and longer intervals, and I remember a distant bonfire scent. Someone was burning garbage in plastic bags, some janitor getting rid of leaves and pumpkin rinds before the first big snow.When the paramedics finally loaded Mr. Adler's body onto a stretcher, the Boy Scouts trailed behind like puppies, hoping for an assignment. They wanted a door to open, something heavy to lift. In the hallway, girls stood sniffling in clumps. A few teachers held their palms to their chests, uncertain what to say or do now."That a Doors song?" one of the paramedics asked. He'd stayed behind to pass out packets of saltines to light-headed students. I shrugged. I must have been humming out loud. He gave me orange Gatorade in a Dixie Cup, saying--as if I were the one he'd come to save, as if his duty were to root out sickness in whatever living thing he could find--"Drink slow now. Do it in sips."The Walleye Capital of the World we were called back then. There was a sign to this effect out on Route 10 and a mural of three mohawked fish on the side of the diner. Those guys were always waving a finny hello--grins and eyebrows, teeth and gums--but no one came from out of town to fish, or do much at all, once the big lakes froze up in November. We didn't have the resort in those days, only a seedy motel. Downtown went: diner, hardware, bait and tackle, bank. The most impressive place in Loose River back then was the old timber mill, I think, and that was because it was half burned down, charred black planks towering over the banks of the river. Almost everything official, the hospital and DMV and Burger King and police station, were twenty-plus miles down the road in Whitewood.The day the Whitewood paramedics took Mr. Adler away they tooted the ambulance horn as they left the school parking lot. We all stood at the windows and watched, even the hockey players in their yellowed caps, even the cheerleaders with their static-charged bangs. Snow was coming down by then, hard. As the ambulance slid around the corner, its headlights raked crazily through the flurries gusting across the road. "Shouldn't there be sirens?" someone asked, and I thought--measuring the last swallow of Gatorade in my little waxed cup--how stupid can people be?Mr. Adler's replacement was Mr. Grierson, and he arrived a month before Christmas with a deep, otherworldly tan. He wore one gold hoop earring and a brilliant white shirt with pearly buttons. We learned later that he'd come from California, from a private girls' school on the sea. No one knew what brought him all the way to northern Minnesota, midwinter, but after the first week of class, he took down Mr. Adler's maps of the Russian Empire and replaced them with enlarged copies of the US Constitution. He announced he'd double majored in theater in college, which explained why he stood in front of the class one day with his arms outstretched reciting the whole Declaration of Independence by heart. Not just the soaring parts about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the needling, wretched list of tyrannies against the colonies. I could see how badly he wanted to be liked. "What does it mean?" Mr. Grierson asked when he got to the part about mutually pledging our sacred honor.The hockey players slept innocently on folded hands. Even the gifted and talented kids were unmoved, clicking their mechanical pencils until the lead protruded obscenely, like hospital needles. They jousted each other across the aisles. "En garde!" they hissed, contemptuously.Mr. Grierson sat down on Mr. Adler's desk. He was breathless from his recitation, and I realized?in an odd flash, like a too-bright light passing over him?he was middle-aged. I could see sweat on his face, his pulse pounding under gray neck stubble. "People. Guys. What does it mean that the rights of man are self-evident? Come on. You know this."I saw his eyes rest on Lily Holburn, who had sleek black hair and was wearing, despite the cold, a sheer crimson sweater. He seemed to think her beauty could rescue him, that she would be, because she was prettier than the rest of us, kind. Lily had big brown eyes, dyslexia, no pencil, a boyfriend. Her face slowly reddened under Mr. Grierson's gaze.She blinked. He nodded at her, promising implicitly that, whatever she said, he'd agree. She gave a deer-like lick of her lips.I don't know why I raised my hand. It wasn't that I felt sorry for her exactly. Or him.It was just that the tension became unbearable for a moment, out of all proportion to the occasion. "It means some things don't have to be proven," I offered. "Some things are simply true. There's no changing them.""That's right!" he said, grateful?I knew?not to me in particular, but to some hoop of luck he felt he'd stumbled into. I could do that. Give people what they wanted without them knowing it came from me. Without saying a word, Lily could make people feel encouraged, blessed. She had dimples on her cheeks, nipples that flashed like signs from God through her sweater. I was flat chested, plain as a banister. I made people feel judged.Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt down, exhausted, and stayed. In the middle of December so much snow fell the gym roof buckled and school was canceled for a week. With school out, the hockey players went ice fishing. The Boy Scouts played hockey on the ponds. Then came Christmas with its strings of colored lights up and down Main Street, and the competing nativity scenes at the Lutheran and Catholic churches--one with painted sandbags standing in as sheep, and the other with baby Jesus sculpted out of a lump of ice. New Year's brought another serious storm. By the time school started again in January, Mr. Grierson's crisp white shirts had been replaced with nondescript sweaters, his hoop earring with a stud. Someone must have taught him to use the Scantron machine, because after a week's worth of lectures on Lewis and Clark, he gave his first test. While we hunched at our desks filling tiny circles, he walked up and down the aisles, clicking a ballpoint pen.The next day, Mr. Grierson asked me to stay after class. He sat behind his desk and touched his lips, which were chapped and flaking off beneath his fingers. "You didn't do very well on your exam," he told me.He was waiting for an explanation and I lifted my shoulders defensively. But before I could say a word, he said, "Look, I'm sorry." He twisted the stud--delicate, difficult screw--in his ear. "I'm still working out the kinks in my lesson plans. What were you studying before I arrived?""Russia.""Ah." A look of scorn passed over his face, followed immediately by pleasure. "The Cold War lingers in the backcountry."I defended Mr. Adler. "It wasn't the Soviet Union we were talking about. It was czars.""Oh, Mattie." No one ever called me that. It was like being tapped on the shoulder from behind. My name was Madeline, but at school I was called Linda, or Commie, or Freak. I pulled my hands into balls in my sleeves. Mr. Grierson went on. "No one cared about the czars before Stalin and the bomb. They were puppets on a faraway stage, utterly insignificant. Then all the Mr. Adlers went to college in 1961 and there was general nostalgia for the old Russian toys, the inbred princesses from another century. Their ineffectuality made them interesting. You understand?" He smiled then, closing his eyes a little. His front teeth were white, his canines yellow. "But you're thirteen.""Fourteen.""I just wanted to say I'm sorry if this has started off badly. We'll get on better footing soon."The next week he asked me to drop by his classroom after school. This time, he'd taken the stud out of his ear and set it on his desk. Very tenderly, with his forefinger and thumb, he was probing the flesh around his earlobe."Mattie," he said, straightening up.He had me sit in a blue plastic chair beside his desk. He set a stack of glossy brochures in my lap, made a tepee of his fingers. "Do me a favor? But don't blame me for having to ask. That's my job." He squirmed.That's when he asked me to be the school's representative in History Odyssey."This will be great," he said, unconvincingly. "What you do is make a poster. Then you give a speech about Vietnam War registers, border crossings to Canada, etcetera. Or maybe you do the desecration of the Ojibwa peoples? Or those back-to-the land folks that settled up here. Something local, something ethically ambiguous. Something with constitutional implications.""I want to do wolves," I told him."What, a history of wolves?" He was puzzled. Then he shook his head and grinned. "Right. You're a fourteen-year-old girl." The skin bunched up around his eyes. "You all have a thing for horses and wolves. I love that. I love that. That's so weird. What is that about?"Because my parents didn't own a car, this is how I got home when I missed the bus. I walked three miles down the plowed edge of Route 10 and then turned right on Still Lake Road. In another mile the road forked. The left side traced the lake northward and the right side turned into an unplowed hill. That's where I stopped, stuffed my jeans into my socks, and readjusted the cuffs on my woolen mittens. In winter, the trees against the orange sky looked like veins. The sky between the branches looked like sunburn. It was twenty minutes through snow and sumac before the dogs heard me and started braying against their chains.By the time I got home, it was dark. When I opened the door, I saw my mom hunched over the sink, arms elbow-deep in inky water. Long straight hair curtained her face and neck, which tended to give her a cagey look. But her voice was all midwestern vowels, all wide-open Kansas. "Is there a prayer for clogged drains?" she asked without turning around.I set my mittens on the woodstove, where they would stiffen and no longer fit my hands just right in the morning. I left my jacket on, though. It was cold inside.My mom, her own jacket damp with sink water, sat down heavily at the table. But she kept her greasy hands in the air like they were something precious?something wiggling and still alive--that she'd snatched from a pond. Something she might feed us on, a pretty little pair of perch. "We need Drano. Crap." She looked up into the air, then very slowly wiped her palms on her canvas pockets. "Please help. God of infinite pity for the pathetic farce that is human living."She was only half kidding. I knew that. I knew from stories how my parents had ridden in a stolen van to Loose River in the early eighties, how my father had stockpiled rifles and pot, and how, when the commune fell apart, my mother had traded whatever hippie fanaticism she had left for Christianity. For as long as I could remember she went to church three times a week?Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday?because she held out hope that penance worked, that some of the past could be reversed, slowly and over years.My mother believed in God, but grudgingly, like a grounded daughter."Do you think you could take one of the dogs with you and go back?""Back into town?" I was still shivering. The thought made me furious for a second, wiped clean of everything. I couldn't feel my fingers."Or not." She swung her long hair back and swiped her nose with her wrist. "No, not. It's probably below zero out there. I'm sorry. I'll go get another bucket." She didn't move from her chair, though. She was waiting for something. "I'm sorry I asked. You can't be mad at me for asking." She clasped her greasy hands together. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."For each sorry, her voice rose a half step.I waited a second before I spoke. "It's okay," I said.Here's the thing about Mr. Grierson. I'd seen how he crouched down next to Lily's desk. I'd seen how he said, "You're doing fine," and put his hand very carefully, like a paperweight, on her spine. How he lifted his fingertips and gave her a little pat. I saw how curious and frightened he was of the Karens, the cheerleaders, who sometimes pulled off their wool leg warmers and revealed bare winter skin, white and nubbed in gooseflesh. Their legwarmers gave them a rash, which they scratched until their scabs had to be dabbed with buds of toilet paper. I saw how he addressed every question in class to one of them--to the Karens or to Lily Holburn--saying, "Anyone? Anyone home?" Then, making a phone of his hand, he'd lower his voice and growl, "Hello, Holburn residence, is Lily available?" Blushing, Lily would do a closed-mouth smile into the lip of her sleeve.When I met with him after school, Mr. Grierson shook his head. "That was a stupid thing to do with the phone, right?" He was embarrassed. He wanted reassurance that everything was okay, that he was a good teacher. He wanted to be forgiven for all his little mistakes, and he seemed to think--because I crossed my arms and did poorly on tests--that my mediocrity was deliberate, personal. "Here," he said, sheepishly, sliding a narrow blue can across his desk. I took a few sips of his energy drink, something so sweet and caffeinated it made my heart pound almost instantly. After several more gulps I was trembling in my chair. I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering."Did Mr. Adler ever show movies?" he wanted to know.I'm not sure why I played his game. I don't know why I coddled him. "You show so many more movies than him," I said.He smiled with satisfaction. "How's the project going, then?"I didn't answer that. Instead I took another sip of his energy drink, uninvited. I wanted him to know that I saw how he looked at Lily Holburn, that I comprehended that look better than she did, that, though I did not like him at although I found his phone joke creepy and his earring sad, I understood him. But the can was empty. I had to put my lips on metal and pretend to gulp. Outside the window, sleet was shellacking every snowdrift, turning the whole world hard as rock. It would be dark in an hour, less. The dogs would be pacing the far orbit of their chains, waiting. Mr. Grierson was putting on his jacket. "Shall we, then?" He never, never once asked how I got home. Excerpted from History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.