Through bitter storms and ambushes, terror and tragedy, an unrelenting sense of purpose lightened with flashes of humor-“Black had eaten three toes, which, technically, had belonged to an English lord”-carries Feo and her allies to a decisive confrontation with Rakov. Though historical events up to and including the February Revolution take place in the background, Feo’s harrowing journey is the story’s focus. Off she sets on a seemingly quixotic rescue, with beloved semiferal charges Black, White, and Gray (“a bunch of the most beautiful criminals”), a newly born wolf pup, 13-year-old army deserter Ilya, and growing bands of children and disaffected villagers in her wake. Mikail Rakov, declaring that wolves are all vermin, descends to burn the cabin and hustle her mother off to Kresty Prison in the city. Feo’s idyll comes to a sudden end when brutal, sadistic Gen. Petersburg, 12-year-old Feodora, “a dark and stormy girl,” and her strong mother, Marina Petrovich, take wolves that have grown too dangerous for the aristocratic households in which they have been raised from captured cubs and train them to live on their own in the wild. This was the kind of cold that you didn't sit down to think in, unless you wanted to be found dead in the same place in May or June.A young Russian who has known more wolves in her life than people sets out to rescue her mother from a czarist prison.
It took all the sense out of your brain and blew the snow into your eyes until they were glued shut and you had to rub spit into them before they would blink. It was the kind of cold that you booted and kicked your way through.Īnd then there was blind cold. Then there was hard cold, which was when the ice cold got deeper and deeper until at the end of a month you couldn't remember if the summer had ever really existed. It often came with blue skies and was good for skating. There was ice cold, which might take the skin off your palm if you let it, but probably wouldn't if you were careful. It was Feo's favorite weather: The snow was soft and good for making snow wolves. There was snow cold, which plucked at your arms and chapped your lips, but brought real rewards. It was fussy and loud and turned your cheeks as red as if you'd been slapped, but couldn't kill you even if it tried. There was wind cold, which Feo barely felt. “There were, in Feo's experience, five kinds of cold.
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