Children of the Wolf - by Abby Geni (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A woman notices a pattern of men disappearing in her small town, reawakening memories of her childhood raised by a father obsessed with his violent Viking heritage.

As an adult, Liv leads a quiet life, tending to the beekeeping business that supports her and her brother. But when a dead body is discovered in her town, she is forced to grapple with a legacy of violence from when she was small.

As a child, she shared a home in rural Iowa with her brother Finn and their father Ulf. Swedish-born Ulf, a direct descendant of the infamous Erik the Red, raises his children as if they are Vikings. They are homeschooled, speak only Swedish, learn swordplay and archery, celebrate the Norse holidays, and worship the old gods with blood sacrifices.

But when Liv is fourteen, her family's sanctum is broken apart by an FBI raid. Separated from their father, Liv and Finn must learn to adapt to normal life.

Now, twenty years later, Liv and Finn have changed their last names and moved to Haven, Michigan. Through her work as a beekeeper, Liv meets Penny, a secretive, unusual, beguiling woman. Just as her life is beginning to open up in a new ways, she notices a strange and upsetting pattern in the area around Haven: men are disappearing. As she tallies up the missing men, her anxieties over Ulf's incarceration are renewed.

While she's thrown back into the uncertainty she felt after Ulf's arrest, Liv struggles to hold on to what she knows to be true, she must decide how to proceed: whether to involve her loved ones in her suspicions, leave the whole matter alone, or take action to solve--and stop--the same kind of violence she always hoped to escape.

About the Author

Abby Geni is the author of the The Body Farm, longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Story Prize; The Lightkeepers, winner of the inaugural Chicago Review of Books Award of Best Fiction; The Wildlands, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Last Animal, an Indies Introduce Debut Authors selection and finalist for the Orion Book Award. Geni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recipient of the Iowa Fellowship.