Wolf Bells
A Novel
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- $279.00
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- $279.00
Descripción editorial
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK AND ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025
The acclaimed author of Red Clocks returns with a biting, lyrical novel about an intergenerational group home run by an ex-musician determined to make a place for those without one
On a bluff above a river rises The House, where elderly and disabled residents live alongside young people who help out in exchange for free rent. The community is led by a former punk singer who never wanted to be responsible for anyone yet now finds herself the caretaker of this precarious collection of lives. It’s not a family, exactly, but it’s got the complicated, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, dynamics of kinship.
When two kids—Nola and her little cousin James—show up on The House’s back porch in need of refuge, the whole experiment is thrown into question. All are welcome here, or that was the idea. But the authorities are looking for these children, and The House’s finances are teetering on the edge.
Zumas’s long-anticipated third novel wrestles with America’s crisis of care in a taut, aching, polyphonic tale that moves as fast as the crackling comebacks that fly between The House’s residents over breakfast. As the rules of the outside world start to press in on this safe haven, readers will find themselves asking, what would the world look like if everyone had a place to belong?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The taut latest from Zumas (Red Clocks) traces the complex dynamics of an intentional community, where two children find refuge from child protective services. Former punk musician Caz has turned her ancestral house into a financially precarious group home, where elderly residents including her dementia-afflicted mother cohabitate with younger folks like her former bandmate Vara, who uses a wheelchair and serves as the house's nurse. When 13-year-old Nola and her autistic younger cousin, James, show up at the house, Caz decides to help them hide after Nola claims that James got the wounds on his wrists while in CPS custody. Marika, a prickly Jewish Greek Holocaust survivor, takes quickly to James, who reminds her of her brother. After a couple of days, the household finds a new rhythm to accommodate the children, and they resist pressure from a pastor neighbor who catches onto their clandestine sheltering of the kids and suggests a member of his congregation could foster them. As Zumas subtly unwraps Caz's motivations for establishing the house and reveals her hidden connection to the children, the story builds to an oblique but powerful meditation on the comfort and instability of found family. This packs a punch.
