Wolf Moon

In ancient Bohemia, legend had it that winter nights of the Wolf Moon were a time to say safely indoors or risk being devoured by hungry wolves. But in December 1944, in southern Germany, when nineteen-year-old Liesl Erhardt stumbles upon a young German deserter half frozen in the dark, snowy forest, it is the Gestapo, not wolves, who engender fear and threaten her safety. Liesl is orphaned, inexperienced, and afraid. The Gestapo arrested her father and set the house on fire. Not long after, her mother committed suicide. Liesl now lives alone in her old playhouse above the undamaged garage. She found necessary employment at the nearby Army post as the au pair to Captain Schmitt and his wife Gretchen's two children, George and Heidi. On the eve of the Battle of the Bulge, before Captain Schmitt leaves for Belgium, he elicits Liesl's promise that, should he be killed, she will not abandon his family. Wolf Man, by Anne Reed Ruiz, is about courage, choice, and a young woman's quest for safety in the dangerous final months of World War II and the uncertainty of the transition to a foreign occupation.

Anne Reed Ruiz was born and grew up in New York State. Since graduating from Cornell in 1953, she has traveled and lived in many places, including six years in southern Germany. She now resides in northern Colorado, gardening, practicing Tai Chi, and writing poetry as well as fiction.