A haunting, "exquisitely written" novel that explores the true costs of tradition, gun ownership, masculinity, and Southern mythmaking through the lens of an accidental shooting that reverberates across generations (Fiona McFarlane, author of The Night Guest).
Rachel Ruskin never intended to return to her family’s tobacco farm in Shiloh, North Carolina. But when her academic career studying Southern folklore in New York City flames out, she has no choice. Back in her hometown in the wake of family loss, she is alone, haunted by memories, by ghosts, and by Shiloh’s buried history of racism and violence.
When another child is accidentally shot and killed, however, Rachel can no longer avoid confronting her own past wrongs; nor can she continue to hold herself apart from her community. How can the people of Shiloh reconcile their love of hunting and their belief in tradition with the loss of more children? How can she find a way back to those she grew up loving? Drawn into the rhythms of Shiloh and in search of a place to be-long, Rachel must question everything she grew up believing and at the same time find a way to accept those around her.
Haunting, fierce, and urgently topical, Inside the Wolf is a page-turning and redemptive novel about masculinity, guns, violence—and the American past.
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Inside the Wolf is a compulsively readable meditation on regret, grief, and the love/hate relationship so many of us have with our home-places. Rowland’s tight, propulsive prose carries us to a brilliantly realized place that examines concepts of history, myth, and folklore through the lens of a complex, endearing main character. This novel is hard to put down and stays with you long after the last page is turned.
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Silas House, author of Lark Ascending