The Wolf Wants In

Starred review from June 24, 2019
In this intelligent thriller set in the opioid-ravaged town of Blackwater, Kans., from McHugh (Arrowood), Sadie Keller and her sister, Becca, are desperate to know why their normally healthy brother, Shane, suddenly died. They suspect Shane’s new wife, Crystle, and her relatives, the drug-dealing Pettits, are to blame. The Blackwater police have closed the case and are now preoccupied with a missing girl whose skull may have been found in the woods. Across town, 18-year-old Henley Pettit knows she will always be tainted by the “knotted threads of her family’s misdeeds” if she stays in Blackwater. She worries her clandestine relationship with the scion of Blackwater’s wealthiest man will further trap her. Henley desperately wants to start a new life anywhere else, away from her often-missing opioid-addicted mother and the crimes of her uncles. Elegant plotting, finely honed character studies, and lyrical prose draw the women’s lives closer as Sadie and Henley deal with their own small-town ennui. This emotionally resonant tale will also appeal to literary-fiction readers. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand, Union Literary.

Two excellent narrators flesh out this gritty mystery set amid the opioid epidemic in the American heartland. Sadie is a single mother whose brother has just died under mysterious circumstances. Suzanne Elise Freeman portrays Sadie, imbuing her with both intelligence and world-weariness. Henley is an 18-year-old girl who grew up in a large family on the wrong side of the tracks. She is voiced superbly in a childlike tone by Tara Turnbull. She wants nothing more than to get out of town but instead becomes involved with the spoiled scion of the town's wealthiest family. The scourge of drug addiction leaves no one untouched in this character-driven novel featuring riveting performances by two gifted narrators. D.G.P. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine