The Wolf Hunt
A Novel
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen returns with a timely and suspenseful exploration of the fault lines in a community, a school, and a family, as a mother begins to suspect her teenage son of committing a terrible crime.
Lilach has it all: a beautiful home in the heart of Silicon Valley, a successful husband and stable marriage, and a teenage son, Adam, with whom she has always felt a particular closeness. Israeli immigrants, the family has now lived in the U.S. long enough that they consider it home. But after a brutal attack on a local synagogue shakes their sense of safety, Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of confidence and belonging.
Then, tragedy strikes again when an African American boy dies at a house party, apparently from a drug overdose. Though he was a high school classmate, Adam claims not to know him. Yet rumors begin to circulate that the death was not accidental, and that Adam and his new friends had a history with Jamal. As more details surface and racial tensions in the community are ignited, Lilach begins to question everything she thought she knew about her son. Could her worst fears be possible? Could her quiet, reclusive child have had something to do with Jamal’s death?
Praised for “instilling emotional depth into a thriller plot” (New York Times Book Review on Waking Lions), Ayelet Gundar-Goshen once again brings together taut, page-turning suspense, superb writing, and razor-sharp insight into the fault lines of race, identity, and privilege and the dark secrets we hide from those we love most.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The latest from Gundar-Goshen (The Liar) is an ethically complex literary thriller. Israeli immigrant Lilach Shuster lives comfortably in Silicon Valley, where her husband, Mikhael, is COO of a weapons tech company and their teenage son, Adam, enjoys science. But a deadly attack at a local synagogue shatters the community's sense of safety. Adam, along with other Jewish teens, signs up for krav maga–style defense training led by the charismatic, intense Uri, an acquaintance of Mikhael's from when they were in the Israeli army. When Jamal, a Black teen who repeatedly bullied Adam, dies at a party of an apparent overdose, Adam becomes a suspect and antisemitic graffiti surfaces at his high school. Amid escalating blame and suspicion and with little social or professional support, Lilach feels alienated—not truly part of an American community, no longer fully Israeli—and at odds with the rest of her family due to her mounting skepticism of the mysterious Uri and his methods. Gundar-Goshen effectively employs the long history of tension between Jews and the Nation of Islam, as well as the latent prejudices of her characters, to cast doubt and build suspense. These biases include Lilach's own, which surface in her narration and make for an intriguing character study. This brainy suburban suspense novel is both taut and timely.
