Wolf Road: The Times Children's Book of the Week

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Survival/revenge/redemption + tough-talkin', knife-wieldin' heroine + post-apocalyptic setting + a strong female friendship. "The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity." The best thing about The Wolf Road is the voice. Main character and first-person narrator Elka is one badass bitch. She wasn't raised by wolves, but might have been better off if she had been. Memories ain’t no one’s friend. They show you all the good things you had, all the good things you lost, and don’t let you forget all the bad shit in between.’ One day after Elka has lived with him for years she finds out that the man she calls Daddy is a serial killer. She takes off into the woods with just a knife to escape from him. Her parents had gone North when Elka was a baby to get rich from a gold rush. She heads toward North to find them.

I seen women take this kind a’ help from a man with a look a’ relief on their faces. I wondered if these women knew how much easier their lives would be if they did all this stuff for themselves.’ What was the world like 30 thousand years ago? Before the dawn of civilisation and deep in the Ice Age how did our ancestors live? What did they think? How did they pass the time? How much were they like us? In a very different Western Canada from the one we know now, a young girl is lost in the woods and found by a trapper with strange tattoos on his face. Her parents having gone up North prospecting for gold, she is alone in the world and Trapper, as she comes to call him, takes her in and raises her to forage and hunt. It's not an easy life, but its the only one Elka knows for many years, until a determined Magistrate named Jennifer Lyon tells her the truth about her adopted father: Trapper's true name is Kreagar Hallet, and he is wanted for several murders. When she realizes she is wanted as well, Elka runs off into the wilderness to try and find her long lost parents, but both Hallet and Lyon are hot on her heels.Deep in the woods of what was once called British Columbia, 17-year-old Elka is struggling to survive on her own. After what she refers to as the “Big Damn Stupid”, the two wars that demolished the world that we know, this post-apocalyptic wasteland isn’t for the weak-willed. When she was only 7-years-old, Elka was caught in a massive storm and lost her grandmother but was taken in by a man she called “Trapper”, a man that taught her everything she needed to know about surviving and became the closest thing she could call family. When Elka discovers that “Trapper” a.k.a Kreager Hallet is wanted by the law for the deaths of many, she disappears thinking that she must be next. Her plan is to finally set off to find her long lost parents who left her with her grandmother to go in search of wealth, but her days traversing the woods alone get her mind racing as to the reasons why Kreager Hallet kept her alive all these years. This book is extremely dark and sometimes mystical. (There is my warning for the readers that are going to yell about how gross it gets)..Crap I loved this book! 4.5 stars! Discover the history of our lifetime through one girl's adventure, in the epic new children's novel from bestselling author and broadcaster, Professor Alice Roberts.

Potential readers should know that despite what the Goodreads summary says, The Wolf Road isn’t remotely like The Road. The post-apocalyptic element is extremely underdeveloped. It consists merely of references to some bombing event (“The Damn Stupid,” in Elka’s words). Lewis never elaborated beyond that. The True Grit comparison is more apt, but in many respects this is quite like the 1985 movie “The Journey of Natty Gann” (minus the train, romance, and loving father). The Wolf Road features a relentless serial killer, but it’s his young prey that this story’s really about; he’s there, but he’s not. This is about her journey--literally and figuratively. Elka was found by Trapper when she was seven-years-old. She had gotten swept up into a storm (literally) and dumped near his hut. He decided to keep her and teach her to live off the land. Elka thought of him as a father figure. Her parents had left her with her nana and set out to see if they could find gold in the North. Well things happened and she ended up living with Trapper for years. Until one day . . . the one day . . . she found out he was a killer. He killed women and boys and whatever he felt I guess. See, he not only hunted animals, he hunted people. Monsters ain't real 'cept in kids' imaginations, under the beds, in the closets. We live in a world a' men and there ain't no good come out of tellin' them they monsters. Makes 'em think they ain't done nothin' wrong, that it's their nature and they can't do nothin' to change that. Callin' 'em a monster makes 'em somethin' different from the rest of us, but they ain't. They just men, flesh and bone and blood. Bad'uns, truth, but men all the same.Twelve year old Tuuli is a member of a talo, a small tribe of connected families. She lives with her parents, ten year old brother and her cousins, aunts and their partners. Their talo are reindeer people, “sustained by the reindeer, connected with the reindeer”. Told in the first person the book is completely inside Elka's head. You might think that sounds boring but this book is anything but that. She will take you with her though, the gorgeous descriptive prose is totally immersive, the setting coming alive around you – a primitive and chilly post apocalyptic world cleverly set in no time or place specifically but all the more real for it. Primitive and unforgiving, The Wolf Road is part road trip, part drama, part mystery but the heart of it is this one girl, Elka. You will never forget her. One a’ them rules is don’t go trusting another man’s path…People do it, they do what their mommies and daddies did, they make them same mistakes, they have them same joys and hurts, they just repeating. Trees don’t grow exactly where their momma is; ain’t no room…I weren’t following no one up through life.’