Title: The Wolf Gift
Author: Anne Rice
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Published: Feb. 14, 2012
The time is the present.
The place, the rugged coast of Northern California. A bluff high above the Pacific. A grand mansion full of beauty and tantalizing history set against a towering redwood forest.A young reporter on assignment from the San Francisco Observer . . . An older woman welcoming him into her magnificent family home that he has been sent to write about and that she must sell with some urgency . . . A chance encounter between two unlikely people . . . An idyllic night—shattered by horrific unimaginable violence, the young man inexplicably attacked—bitten—by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness . . . A violent episode that sets in motion a terrifying yet seductive transformation, as the young man, caught between ecstasy and horror, between embracing who he is evolving into and fearing what he will become, soon experiences the thrill of the wolf gift.
As he resists the paradoxical pleasure and enthrallment of his wolfen savagery and delights in the power and (surprising) capacity for good, he is caught up in a strange and dangerous rescue and is desperately hunted as “the Man Wolf” by authorities, the media, and scientists (evidence of DNA threatens to reveal his dual existence) . . . As a new and profound love enfolds him, questions emerge that propel him deeper into his mysterious new world: questions of why and how he has been given this gift; of its true nature and the curious but satisfying pull towards goodness; of the profound realization that there may be others like him who are watching—guardian creatures who have existed throughout time who possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge. And throughout it all, the search for salvation for a soul tormented by a new realm of temptations, and the fraught, exhilarating journey, still to come, of being and becoming, fully, both wolf and man.
Author Notes:
“Writing this book was a pure joy. It was a return for me to gothic motifs — the old dark house, a mysterious death, the promise of family secrets, and the supernatural monster as hero — that I had used in the Vampire Chronicles, and the Tales of the Mayfair Witches. And once again, I felt compelled to create an origin story and a cosmology — this time for my protagonist, Reuben Golding, who finds himself periodically turning into the werewolf of legend. Only unlike the doomed werewolves of so many popular films, Reuben retains full awareness during the transformation and a keen enjoyment of his immense wolfen powers. He never becomes a four footed animal, but remains a deeply conflicted, fierce but compassionate beast-man, hungry for power, and for answers as to the mystery of what he has become.
Though similar in many ways to my vampires novels, Reuben’s story is almost entirely contemporary. And for the first time in my writing career I explored the haunted atmosphere of California’s cold, mist shrouded redwood forests, and the romance of the windswept northern California coast. I lived in northern California for over thirty years, and it was a great pleasure to get back to it, to have my hero dining in San Francisco’s North Beach, or meeting his lady love in the quaint town of Mill Valley for breakfast, or driving his sports car north on Highway 101 as he pushes deeper into a grim but at times glorious adventure. ——
I’ve been asked: will this be a series? I don’t know. I held nothing back in the writing of The Wolf Gift, but the characters are alive in my imagination, as vividly as any I’ve ever created, and I see the grand house of Nideck Point looming against a leaden sky, beckoning me just as it beckoned my hero, Reuben”. -Anne Rice, Author.
For more information about Anne Rice, please visit her website at www.annerice.com. The Wolf Gift is available at Amazon.com and other major retailers.