Book Review: Little Wolves by Thomas Maltman

Title: Little Wolves
Author: Thomas Maltman

Publication Date: January 8, 2013
Publisher: Soho Press

Source: Book Club

Format: Hardcover

Age Group: Adult

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

           

Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that’s pushing family farms to the brink, Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor’s wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own.

So this is one of my first adult books that I have found myself committing too especially since I am so used to reading only Young Adult. So I was a little nervous as to how I might take this book and how it might be. Would I like it? Dislike it? And so after taking some time with it and letting it sit me some nights and others racing through it, I have come to a conclusion that I am pleasantly surprised by it...in a good way of course. 

The book follows two characters switching back and forth between the chapters. The first character Grizz has just gone through the event of losing his son after he killed a sheriff and then went and killed himself. He is having to face the accusations of the town and hear the whispers of the church people talking about how dark and strange his son Seth was. On the other hand, their is Clara. Married to a minister, working on her dissertation in literature, and searching the small town, she is having a hard time clicking in, in search of some answers to her past. 

What I liked most was the whole sense of mystery that was hovering over the town and the characters as things start to not just seem different but feel different. I liked how we were able to see how in a small town, any event can cause some to be praised or isolated, how your past never leaves the person you grow up to be, and finally how small towns remind me of high school cliques. 

The book does have you start at a slow pace, and there were moments where  I had to reread some paragraphs but for the most part the story just zipped right through. I am really happy that I enjoyed this read. The ending left on a somewhat happy note, both of the main characters were able to find something to keep them pushing forward even in some struggling times. 

Thomas Maltman is an author I would want to check out, and for being my first adult novel that I have read from beginning to end, I nod my head in success.