The book is troubling at times but also hopeful. An unnamed ghost watches over her and narrates her life while also providing glimpses of the girl the ghost once was twenty-five years earlier. Thirteen Wolves takes place in the 1940s Chicago, a bleak time where in an orphanage, a young girl named Frankie lives with her brother and sister after their mother died and father surrendered them to the nuns. She has such a way of describing and delving into a character’s nature that it’s almost as if by the end of the novel, I’ve been reading about friends and relatives all along. She makes her characters so real that I wasn’t surprised to learn that she did base her protagonist on her mother in law. It is a stunning, heartbreaking, glorious work of fiction that showcases Laura Ruby’s astounding talent. It comes as absolutely no surprise that the book is already long-listed for a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I knew I would love Thirteen Doors, Wolves Behind Them All but I didn’t know what else to expect as her work combines the best of storytelling, the unfolding of characters and worlds with no idea where they lead and no choice but to follow them. I was stunned by how versatile she is as a writer when I read her middle-grade debut, York: The Shadow Cipher and knew instantly that she was a must-read author for me for life. I first fell in love with Laura Ruby’s words with her debut and Printz Award winner, Bone Gap, an eerie, beautifully written ode to the myth of Hades and Persephone with her own fantastic twist.
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