Wolf Road (Lewis)

The Wolf Road 
Beth Lewis, 2016
Crown Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101906125


Summary
Elka barely remembers a time before she knew Trapper. She was just seven years old, wandering lost and hungry in the wilderness, when the solitary hunter took her in.

In the years since then, he’s taught her how to survive in this desolate land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other.
 
But the man Elka thought she knew has been harboring a terrible secret. He’s a killer. A monster. And now that Elka knows the truth, she may be his next victim.
 
Armed with nothing but her knife and the hard lessons Trapper’s drilled into her, Elka flees into the frozen north in search of her real parents. But judging by the trail of blood dogging her footsteps, she hasn’t left Trapper behind—and he won’t be letting his little girl go without a fight.

If she’s going to survive, Elka will have to turn and confront not just him, but the truth about the dark road she’s been set on.
 
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. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
Beth Lewis is a managing editor at Titan Books in London. She was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She has been a bank cashier, a fire performer, and a juggler. (From the publisher .)

Book Reviews
[A]rresting, if grisly struggle...for survival in the land once known as British Columbia, which has been laid waste by two wars that destroyed most of humankind.... [A]n overwhelmingly grim odyssey that highlights the striking wilderness landscape and Elka’s grit.
Publishers Weekly


A girl on the run in a post-apocalyptic wilderness soon realizes that your past can not only haunt you, it can kill you.... A romp through the frozen woods on the trail of a killer who's also hunting you can be satisfying, but this debut is a rabbit snare that comes up empty time and again.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Wolf Road...then take off on your own:

1. How would you describe Elka: she's far from squeamish...but what else would you say about her? Is she an engaging character? Do you find her credible?

2. The Wolf Road contains a fair amount of violence, some of it quite visceral. In writing the book, Beth Lewis has said that she "felt like glossing over those scenes" but that to do so would being doing "a disservice to her character and readers." What might she mean by that? What affect does the violence have on Elka and her sense of determination? What affect does it have on you, the reader?

3. Discuss the "Damned Stupid" event which left the world so altered. What exactly was it?

4. How are roads used as metaphors in this book. Consider Elka's thoughts about roads:

I don’t much like roads. Roads is some other man’s path that people follow no question. All my life I lived by rules of the forest and rules of myself. One of them rules is don’t go trusting another man’s path.

Journies are also traditional literary metaphors. How does Elka's journey function symbolically in The Wolf Road?

5. What role does the wolf club play in Elka's survival?

6. Did the book's ending take you by surprise? Were you caught off guard, or did you see in coming it?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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