Can
a human truly make room in her heart for the Wild?
Thea
Villalobos has long since given up trying to be what others expect of
her. So in Elijah Sorensson she can see through the man of the world
to a man who is passionate to the point of heartbreak. But something
inside him is dying…
Elijah
Sorensson has all kinds of outward success: bespoke suits, designer
New York City apartment, women clamoring for his attention. Except
Elijah despises the human life he’s forced to endure. He’s Alpha
of his generation of the Great North Pack, and the wolf inside him
will no longer be restrained…
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THE BOOK:
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About
the Author
Maria
Vale is
a journalist who has worked for Publishers Weekly, Glamour magazine,
Redbook, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She is a logophile and a
bibliovore and a worrier about the world. Trained as a medievalist,
she tries to shoehorn the language of Beowulf into things that don't
really need it. She currently lives in New York with her husband, two
sons and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a pet.
Excerpt:
Elijah
intentionally lost a challenge that would have brought him back to
Homelands. He is battered inside and out and turns to Thea, a woman
he doesn’t have any claim on. But she takes him in and cares for
his injuries (“a fight” is all he tells her) and when a snowstorm
moves in, he stays. The peace he had hoped for turns to something
else.
“‘The
great man’”—I try to remember the quotes and strip away the
emendations that John made, altering them to our circumstances; “the
great wolf” was what he actually said—“‘is the one who in the
midst of the crowd’”—John said “of humans”—“‘keeps
with perfect sweetness the stillness of the forest.’”
She
stares at her book for a moment and then puts her finger on a
passage.
“The
quote is ‘keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.’ I like yours though.”
“My
old English teacher loved Emerson. But I learned it a long time ago.
Must have mixed it up.”
Of
course, I didn’t. The summer before we were to go Offland, Leonora
did her best to make sure that those of us who were leaving
understood how to appear human in the world they had re-created in
their image.
John
tried to do something altogether more subtle and difficult. Whatever
disguises we were wearing, he wanted to make sure that we preserved
the Homelands within us. He wanted us to make sure that there was a
place for the wild inside, even if there wasn’t a place for it
anywhere else.
“You
liked your English teacher?”
“What?
My… Yes. Very much. He was more than an English teacher. He was
kind of the…head of our little rural community. We’re very
tight-knit, but tempers can run short. He worked hard to keep
everyone together.”
...
She
dunks the tea bag a few times before fishing it out with a spoon and,
wrapping the string around it, squeezes it dry. “Was it worth
fighting for?”
“I
didn’t win, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not
really. A good fight isn’t about the outcome. It’s about knowing
that you’ve made things better by trying.”
Then
I hear Victor’s voice. “You will win, Alpha,” he says. My one
advocate with his sour, judgmental voice and his sour, judgmental
face.
“Honestly,
I don’t know if it was worth fighting for. I don’t know anything
anymore. And no one seems to know who I am.”
When
she blows across her tea, she sends the damp-orchid-and-honey scent
to my waiting nose.
“Do
you? Know who you are?”
“Of
course, I do,” I snap, all the Pack’s skepticism and my own
self-doubt suddenly brought to a head by this woman who doesn’t
know me from Adam. Then I remember what she is. A woman. A human. “I
am a partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the country.”
“You’re
not just a lawyer, any more than I am just an ECO.”
“So
what else would you say you are?”
“All
sorts of things. I’m a woman who doesn’t listen to music in the
background, because that’s not actually listening. Who is a
vegetarian gun owner. Who makes her living helping people but likes
to be alone. Whose ancestors were on this landmass when the people
who yell at her to ‘go home’ were sleeping with pigs in Europe.
Who likes caffeine and Cheetos. Who was in a sorority for four
months. Who is the daughter of dead parents and the sister of a dead
brother.”
She
lifts her tea to her lips.
“What
happened to your family?”
“You’re
changing the subject. I’m saying that I’ve never met anyone who
was just one thing. Who was just ‘a lawyer.’ So, Elijah
Sorensson, Esquire,
what else
are you?”
What
else am I? I’m an exile. A disappointment. An Alpha without a Pack.
A leader no one wants to follow. A flashy vessel hiding something
unspeakably sacred and undeniably fragile. I am a monster: neither
one thing nor the other, belonging nowhere.
“Lost,”
I say, staring at the fire until my single working eye begins to dry
out. “Just. Fucking. Lost.”
My
throat feels achy and full, and I turn back to the page, pretending
to read, because I feel her ironwood eyes on me, and I know what she
sees: an angry, defensive, broken, defeated man in a human’s
castoffs and with a wolf-ravaged, bruised-gourd face.
And
then I feel something else. I feel Thea’s hand hanging loose
between us. She has returned to her book, but the wordless invitation
is there. The cabin being what it is, when I let my hand drape to the
side of the bed, I’m close enough to touch her.
In
the snow-muffled peace of no expectations, I stare sightless at the
pages, every nerve focused on the shared heartbeat between our
fingers.
When
I finally look up from the blurred pages, the mottled fire is
reflected in the warmth and welcome of her eyes. I can’t stop
myself. I collapse to my knees, my head at her lap, my arm wrapped
around her knees, silently asking if this woman who makes a living
finding people can find me too.
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