Eleven-year-old Annabelle McBride was hungering for change. She felt as if excitement waited for her "like an uncut cake." But now, everything's a terrible mess, and she wishes the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Betty Glengarry had never moved to Wolf Hollow that fateful fall of 1943. Readers of Wolf Hollow will immediately feel the chill this "dark-hearted" 14-year-old bully brings to a close-knit farming community in rural Pennsylvania.
When a rock, thrown from a nearby hill, blinds her friend Ruth in one eye, Annabelle is sure it must have been Betty's doing. After all, Betty has beaten her with a stick and crushed a bird's neck in front of her. But Betty says she saw Toby throw the rock. Toby is a tall, solitary World War I vet who roams the hills of Wolf Hollow with three guns strapped to his back. Annabelle knows Toby couldn't have thrown the rock--Toby is enigmatic, but she believes he's a good man. When Betty disappears, Toby is blamed again, and the suspense builds unbearably.
Lauren Wolk's nuanced, nerve-wracking middle-grade debut takes a close look at how dangerous it is to make assumptions of guilt or innocence based on appearances--and how telling the truth and standing up against injustice are essential, even if the wrongs are not always righted. Annabelle is a likable, engaging character, and readers will enjoy lively descriptions of her farm chores as well as her honest pleasure in the "small, unbottled genies" that are her younger brothers. Wolk has a clean and poetic way with words, and her story is finely crafted, haunting and unlikely to be forgotten. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness