thomas maltman

Great news!  Little Wolves has been selected for the All Iowa Reads program and will be read in communities across the state in 2014! See more here by clicking this hyperlink.  A finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, Little Wolves was also named a favorite mystery of 2013 by the Milwaukie Journal Sentinel, and School Library Journal called it one of the best adult books for teens in 2013, describing the novel as “dark, brooding…and beautifully written.”  Please see the News and Reviews page for the latest updates including a starred review from Library Journal and a lovely review in the Star Tribune.

 

A tragic act of violence echoes through a small Minnesota town

Set on the Minnesota prairie in the late 1980s during a drought season that’s pushing family farms to the brink,Little Wolves features the intertwining stories of a father searching for answers after his son commits a heinous murder, and a pastor’s wife (and washed-out scholar of early Anglo-Saxon literature) who has returned to the town for mysterious reasons of her own. A penetrating look at small-town America from the award-winning author of The Night Birds, Little Wolves weaves together elements of folklore and Norse mythology while being driven by a powerful murder mystery; a page-turning literary triumph.

“A complicated portrait of a prairie town, a meditation on violence, a fantasia of myth and folklore, and a knockout murder mystery, Little Wolves is haunting, at times terrifying, a gothic cousin to Kent Haruf’s Plainsong. I loved this book.”

—Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon, The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

“The poetry of this prose and the suspense of the plot, along with the intensity of characterization will have many readers comparing Thomas Maltman to Cormac McCarthy—that greatest of compliments—for very good reason. This novel is a work of high art by the real thing.”

—Laura Kasischke, author of Space, in Chains and The Life Before Her Eyes

“An ambitious mythic thriller that hums with energy and portent. Set under brooding prairie skies, Little Wolves has modern psychoses and generational wickedness,ravening devils and uneasy saints. It shifts and dodges like wind, and it rings with conviction and confidence.”
—Leif Enger, author of Peace Like A River