Raised by Wolves by Tristan Bancks

Tristan Bancks you need to know the power of your story. There is a sentence early on this story that set me up to feel so much pain. Olive leaves her home to chase after her criminal father.

"If Olive lets dad go now, they'll never see it (the money) again, which could mean very bad things for their family. ... She slides the door closed behind her and leaps over the giant puddle at the back door, splashing down at the edge of it, bare feet snap-freezing. If she goes back for shoes, she'll talk herself out of this. ... She squints her eyes shut, musters every ounce of courage she has, then closes the gate behind her and sets out into the night." pg 45

Wait a minute! Go back a re-read this. Olive has no shoes on. I think I felt every step, every rock, every horrible surface over that terrible night as Olive chases her father across the dark, rainy city. Oh, and her phone battery is nearly dead too! How will she contact Ben, her brother. Ironically, he is training to be a police officer, but things are spiraling out of control and Olive really needs his help. 

Just to back-track a little. Mum is working hard to support the family so she is often late coming home. Olive is always on the alert checking the house and locking the doors and windows. Then one day she sees her Dad - the dad who stole over $900,000 five years ago. She follows him, talks to him and even shares a donut with him. Then dad asks her for money - $10,000!

At the heart of this story there is a theme of love and belonging. Olive knows her father committed a dreadful crime and that he put their family in terrible danger but she just wants to know - does he love her?

"Do you love me?' she asks and immediately wishes she could gobble the words back up. Dad looks surprised. ... 'Course I do,' Dad says. Olive feels a rush of blood from her chest to her cheeks. She has never heard Dad say this before. Technically, he didn't actually say it, but pretty much." pg 18

"She thinks of Dad. He's a bit rough around the edges, and he smells weird, but he's nicer than she remembers. And he loves me. She feels like an idiot for thinking it. Judges and lawyers need to be good at picking lies, but she believes him. She really does." pg 23

Maybe this is why Olive offers to give her father the $10,000 and why he finds their house and why he takes the bag with all the money that mum has been hiding and why Olive then decides she has to go after him to get that money back so that she and mum and Ben can possibly, perhaps, maybe, find a happy 'normal' life.

I read Raised by Wolves late into the night and continued into the early hours of the morning. I turned to the last page at 1.21am. It is very early in the year but I am absolutely certain Raised by Wolves will be a CBCA 2027 Notable title (fingers crossed the judges agree with me that it can stand alone because there is an awards rule about sequels). I highly highly recommend you add Raised by Wolves to your library - add it to your shopping list today. 

Publisher blurb: Twelve-year-old Olive Silver knows how to check every room with a knife when she gets home from school, how to survive alone and how to keep secrets. She’s had to – ever since her criminal dad abandoned her family five years ago and let them pay for his crime. But now, he’s back.

The day she spots him outside her school, everything tilts. Olive calls her big brother Ben, who’s two days from graduating the police academy, and follows Dad through rain and darkness, across railway tracks and through wrecking yards, desperate for answers. Does Dad love her? Or is he only back for the money? As the night spins out of control, Olive faces a choice: let Dad go or hunt him down and bring him to justice. Raised by Wolves is a tense, heart-stopping thriller about loyalty, betrayal and finding out who you really are when the people you trust most let you down.

There is a scene towards the end of Raised by Wolves at the airport - I suggest you use part of this as a way to book talk this thrilling story with your students. 

Raised by Wolves is the sequel to Two Wolves (2014) but this new installment can stand alone. That said, though, your reading experience of Raised by Wolves will be a richer one if you are familiar with Two Wolves. I read Two Wolves in 2015 and so I could only remember fragments of the plot but now I am keen to go back and read it again. In the US Two Wolves has the title 'On the Run'.

I highly recommend all of these other books by Tristan Bancks - we are so lucky here in Australia to be able to share books with our readers by this very talented creator. Pop each title into my search bar or go to this post.