It was just a few weeks earlier that 11-year-old Annabelle McBride was hungering for change. She felt like 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. From the very beginning, readers of Wolf Hollow will feel the chill this "dark-hearted" 14-year-old bully brings to a close-knit farming community in rural Pennsylvania, foreshadowing "that terrible November."
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, crushed a bird's neck in front of her and rigged a sharpened wire across a footpath to harm unwary passers-by. 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, taking photographs. Annabelle knows Toby couldn't have thrown the rock--Toby is enigmatic, but she believes he's a good man. He once even carried her home on his back when she sprained her ankle. Rumors are spreading that Toby had aimed the rock at Mr. Ansel, a German, because if anyone would throw a rock at a German, it would be a World War I vet. And people say there's evidence, too: a photograph Toby took of the scene where Ruth was hurt.
While Annabelle worries about Toby being falsely accused and Betty getting off scot-free, things take an even darker turn. Betty disappears and is nowhere to be found. Of course, the citizens of Wolf Hollow blame Toby for this, too. As Annabelle's mother says, "Toby looks like a villain, whether he is or not." Annabelle courageously steps up and takes action. But the more she tries to protect Toby and stop the mounting madness, the more she is "jumping around like a blind frog." The more tangled her web of lies, the more trapped Toby is. The suspense builds unbearably.
There's hardly a child alive who hasn't experienced the horror and sense of helplessness that takes over when obvious lies are told and, worse, believed by others. Lauren Wolk's nuanced and nerve-wracking middle-grade debut takes a close, dark 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
Shelf Talker: When a dark-hearted girl moves to Wolf Hollow in the fall of 1943, the rural Pennsylvania community is forever changed.