Annie and the Wolves
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A modern-day historian finds her life intertwined with Annie Oakley's in an electrifying novel that explores female revenge and the allure of changing one's past.
Ruth McClintock is obsessed with Annie Oakley. For nearly a decade, she has been studying the legendary sharpshooter, convinced that a scarring childhood event was the impetus for her crusade to arm every woman in America. This search has cost Ruth her doctorate, a book deal, and her fiancé—but finally it has borne fruit. She has managed to hunt down what may be a journal of Oakley’s midlife struggles, including secret visits to a psychoanalyst and the desire for vengeance against the “Wolves,” or those who have wronged her.
With the help of Reece, a tech-savvy senior at the local high school, Ruth attempts to establish the journal’s provenance, but she’s begun to have jarring out-of-body episodes parallel to Annie’s own lived experiences. As she solves Annie’s mysteries, Ruth confronts her own truths, including the link between her teenage sister’s suicide and an impending tragedy in her Minnesota town that Ruth can still prevent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Romano-Lax follows Plum Rains with an engrossing work of speculative fiction featuring a time-traveling Annie Oakley. Failed doctoral candidate Ruth McClintock is working to prove her theory that Oakley was sexually abused by a man Oakley's parents sent her to work for as a child. Aided in her research by high school student Reece, Ruth discovers her neighbor, a cheerleading coach at the school, has been raping students, making him a modern-day "Wolf" Oakley's name for predatory men. As Ruth learns more about Oakley's life, she uncovers Oakley's secret visits to a psychoanalyst, which are informed by chapters following Oakley through various points around the turn of the century. Along the way, Ruth discovers that she and Reece share an ability held by Oakley to travel in time through memory, and that Ruth is clairvoyant. Ruth then tries to prevent the death of her ex-fianc , Scott, in a car crash, and to go back in time to prevent her sister from killing herself. Romano-Lax neatly weaves the parallel narratives of Oakley and Ruth, and juggles various literary devices and genres with aplomb. The dual storylines dovetail perfectly for a winning anthem of female power sustained across a century.
