The Wolf Road

Elka Barely Remembers a time before she knew Trapper. She was just seven years old, wandering lost and hungry in the wilderness, when the solitary hunter took her in. In the years since then, he’s taught her how to survive in this desolate land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other.

But the man Elka thought she knew has been harboring a terrible secret. He’s a killer. A monster. And now that Elka knows the truth, she may be his next victim.

Armed with nothing but her knife and the hard lessons Trapper’s drilled into her, Elka flees into the frozen north in search of her real parents. But judging by the trail of blood dogging her footsteps, she hasn’t left Trapper behind—and he won’t be letting his little girl go without a fight. If she’s going to survive, Elka will have to turn and confront not just him, but the truth about the dark road she’s been set on.

The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity.

"Stark and soulful, The Wolf Road is a brutal yet poignant journey into the truth of one girl’s origins in a shattered wilderness. It masterfully dances between the savagery of the wild and the raw, blunt humor of frontier logic. A rollicking, striking read." Robert Jackson Bennett, author of City of Stairs

"Addictive and compelling..an apocalyptic thriller with a dark, horrible heart. It’s impossible not to root for Elka as she fights her way through a chilling — but disturbingly familiar — wasteland." Kelly Braffet, author of Save Yourself

"A remarkable first novel that drew me in from page one. I was reminded of the beautiful savagery of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the elegiac overtones of Dickey’s Deliverance while reading—but Lewis has crafted something completely unique here, carried so powerfully along by the voice of its indelible young narrator." Nick Cutter, author of The Troop

"A white-knuckle trip through a gritty, frightening, and all-too-plausible post-apocalypse. You won’t know whether to root for or be afraid of heroine Elka, and you won’t be able to put the book down." Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

Beth Lewis is a managing editor at Titan Books in London. She was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She has been a bank cashier, a fire performer, and a juggler.

Survival is in everything we do. We are hunter-gatherers, whether in the literal sense or the modern, figurative equivalent. No matter how far we evolve from our spear-carrying, mammoth-hunting ancestors, the innate instinct is still there. But most of us have forgotten the basics. Ask your average person on the street how to start a fire without matches or a lighter...

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