A Dream of Wolves: A Novel - Hardcover

White, Michael C

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060194324 ISBN 13: 9780060194321

Publisher: Harper, 2001

Synopsis

Author of the critically acclaimed novels, A Brother's Blood and The Blind Side of the Heart, Michael C. White weaves a brilliant tale of one man's struggle to reconcile the beckoning nostalgia of the past with the allure of a hopeful future, while carving out a livable niche in the present.

A transplanted Yankee, Dr. Stuart Jordan has settled amidst the rugged beauty of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He lives a quiet, small-town life where locals call him "Doc." By day Doe runs an OB/GYN practice, delivering babies into the world and warmly tending to their mothers, but by night he moonlights as the town's medical examiner, as he puts it, "working the other end of the line." Since the tragic death of his son fourteen years earlier, Doe has been willing to lose himself in the daily rhythms of his job and of the mountains and its people. Yet he can't let go of the past, a past which includes Annabel, his estranged, mentally ill wife. Driven by drugs, alcohol, and her own raging demons, she floats in and out of his life like a drifter, wreaking havoc and leaving nothing but painful memories each time she disappears. Knowing that divorce would be the best answer for both of them, Doc, however, can never quite bring himself to abandon the woman he once so dearly loved. Instead, he loses himself in his work, hoping to numb his pain.

But his quiet life is about to be rudely jolted. One night he is called to the scene of a brutal murder and unknowingly comes across three people who will forever change his fate: Rosa Littlefoot, a young Native American woman who has gunned down her abusive lover; her victim, Roy Lee Pugh, a white man related to a violent hill-dwelling clan; and their baby daughter, Maria. Facing arrest and separation from her daughter, Rosa refuses to hand over her baby safely until she extracts a promise from Doe to see to it that her child is cared for while she's in jail. He agrees for the child's sake. With this one promise, Doe is slowly but forcefully drawn into a tangled web of lives ripe with conflict and passion -- those of Rosa and her baby, the backwoods Pugh clan, and Bobbie Tisdale, the local D.A., a beautiful woman who has recently become Doe's lover. There is also the secret Rosa shares with no one. Finally, there is the haunting presence of Annabel. Suddenly thrust into this world of treachery, deceit, and love, Doe finds his heart struggling to embrace an uncertain future and realizes he must fight the battle he has been avoiding all these years.

At times charmingly sweet, at times tensely thrilling, and always emotionally riveting, A Dream of Wolves is a powerful and engaging novel that winds and weaves its way through the bitter struggles and uplifting victories of life.

About this title

About the Author

Michael White's previous novels include the New York Times Notable Book A Brother's Blood as well as The Garden of Martyrs and Soul Catcher, both Connecticut Book of the Year finalists. He is the director of Fairfield University's MFA program in creative writing, and lives in Connecticut.

Reviews

White (A Brother's Blood; The Blind Side of the Heart) skillfully swirls gut-wrenching self-discovery and mystery in his newest fictional offering. Part-time medical examiner and full-time ob-gyn "Doc" Stuart Jordan is called early one morning to a murder scene at a cabin nestled in the frigid hills of North Carolina. Expecting domestic turmoil, Doc is surprised at the composure of the suspected murdererDthe deceased's common-law wife, RosaDand her absorption with her four-month-old baby daughter, Maria. Making a rash pre-arrest vow, Doc promises Rosa he'll care for her child. Despite his ageDhe's 50Dhis full-time practice, his current affair with a married woman, and his estranged wife, Annabel, who has drifted in and out of his life since the death of their son, Doc feels bound to keep his promise. Maria's entrance into Doc's world sends him on a new path, unearthing remembrances of his son; however, it is the reappearance of his wife that throws Doc into a tailspin. Annabel, who has been unstable since their son's death, believing she was partly responsible for it, breezes into his home, assuring him that she is "better" and able to care for the baby, but Doc is wary and unwilling to trust her again. Sleuthing on the side, juggling work and foster-parenthood, a wife and a mistress, Doc must also confront the ghosts of his past and search for a balance between forgiveness and acceptance. Facing pressure from his lover, who has just left her husband, to finally divorce Annabel, Doc is torn between the woman he currently loves and the one he's spent a lifetime caring for. White's emotionally packed novel delivers first-class examinations of morality, mixing strong supporting characters and unexpected plot turns, enveloping the reader in an extraordinary story. (Feb. 5)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dr. Stuart Jordan, White's hero-narrator, works both ends of the life cycle. As an OB-GYN, he ushers people in. As a part-time medical examiner, he sees them out. He fulfills this double role, to his own bemusement, as a transplanted Yankee in Hubbard County, North Carolina, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This dual perspective and the meditations it awakens on what goes right and what went wrong inform the novel. So does Jordan's grief over his five-year-old son, who died 14 years ago. This mystery of character is jump-started with a "pronounce death" call one night. Jordan finds Roy Lee Pugh, a member of a criminal clan in the hills, dead from two shotgun wounds; his Native American wife sits stolidly by, nursing her baby. His promise to the woman, that he'll take care of the baby, draws him into longstanding feuds, bad blood, and criminal enterprise--and into another view on his own life. Jordan's carefully constructed life of habit, punctuated by figuring out the cause of death, which appeals to his love for the mathematical elegance of causes and helps make death manageable, is blown apart by the shotgun blasts of the Pugh homicide. Jordan's is the kind of wise, flawed narrator's voice you want to keep listening to; his takes on Appalachia are eye-opening; his takes on human nature, wrenching. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060194324
• ISBN 13: 9780060194321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400