To my agent, Nat Sobel, I am extremely grateful you found my work in a small literary journal out of Virginia. It’s been an amazing five years. Thank you also to Judith Weber, who, along with Nat, read multiple drafts of this novel. Without the two of you Sometimes the Wolf wouldn’t have become anything close to what it is today.
To David Highfill at William Morrow, this is a dream. Thank you so much for continuing to support artists like me. And (along with Cormac) thank you for one kick-ass title! I owe a great deal to Jessica Williams, who has been there at every step of the process. To Laura Cherkas, thank you for once again doing a fine job of copyediting. To Adam Johnson, who designed the cover for this novel as well as for The Carrion Birds, I have you to thank for another beautiful cover. Thank you to everyone at William Morrow/HarperCollins for helping this novel along. I hope you are as proud of it as I am.
I owe a huge debt to Simon & Schuster UK. Ian Chapman, you are a champion of the publishing industry and I’m so grateful we’ve now had the chance to work on three novels together. I hope there are many more. To Clare Hey, you published my first story in the UK and now you’re my editor. It couldn’t have worked out any better. Thank you so much for your keen eye.
I want to thank the friends who read drafts of this novel, inspired me, or simply offered sound advice. There are many of you, but the few to whom I owe the greatest thanks are Zachary Watterson, Debra DiDomenico, Dan Coxon, Chip Cheek, Lizzie Stark, Carter Sickels, and Jennine Capó Crucet. To Marc Divina, thank you for ridin’ dirty and going crabbing in the middle of the day. To Drew Nicklas, thanks for all the crazy Montana stories. Who knew bears liked alcohol so much? And to Adrian Johnson, keep on keeping on, you feel me?!
A huge thank-you goes out to all my foreign publishers and agents. I really couldn’t do any of this without you. To Joel Gotler, thank you for opening the door to a world I never dreamed of. And to the filmmakers who picked up my first couple novels, Mark Tonderai and Andrew Lauren, I want to say thank you. Just knowing you’re out there keeps me working all that much harder.
Finally, I wouldn’t be here without my parents, who once upon a time saw fit to ground me for half the summer, part of the punishment being an eighty-mile hike through the North Cascades coupled with the assignment of reading ten books and then giving reports on them. Still not sure whether the punishment fit the crime, but I’m grateful all the same.
This novel and the novel before are dedicated to my parents, but all of them are always, always, for my wife, Karen. I couldn’t do any of this without you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
URBAN WAITE is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Carrion Birds and The Terror of Living, which was named one of Esquire’s Ten Best Books of 2011. His work has been a finalist for the New Mexico and Arizona Book Awards, has been translated in nine languages, and is sold worldwide. He lives in Seattle with his wife.
ALSO BY URBAN WAITE
The Terror of Living
CREDITS
Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover photograph © by Stephen Alvarez/National Geographic/Getty Images
Author photograph © by Sean Hunter
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction.
The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SOMETIMES THE WOLF. Copyright © 2014 by Arizona State University.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-221691-5
ePub Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN:9780062216939
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