THE HISTORY OF WOLVES

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017

Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt down, exhausted, and stayed.

Linda has an idiosyncratic home life: her parents live in abandoned commune cabins in northern Minnesota and are hanging on to the last vestiges of a faded counter-culture world.

The kids at school call her 'Freak', or 'Commie'. She is an outsider in all things. Her understanding of the world comes from her observations at school, where her teacher is accused of possessing child pornography, and from watching the seemingly ordinary life of a family she babysits for.

Yet while the accusation against the teacher is perhaps more innocent than it seemed at first, the ordinary family turns out to be more complicated. As Linda insinuates her way into the family's orbit, she realises they are hiding something. If she tells the truth, she will lose the normal family life she is beginning to enjoy with them; and if she doesn't, a life is at stake.

Superbly-paced and beautifully written, The History of Wolves is an extraordinary debut novel about the lengths a person will go to find the life they desire...

'The chilly power of The History of Wolves packs a wallop that's hard to shake off. In the process, Fridlund... has constructed an elegant, troubling debut, both immersed in the natural world but equally concerned with issues of power, family, faith and the gap between understanding something and being able to act on the knowledge.' - The LA Times