St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Here is the debut short story collection from the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Swamplandia! and the New York Times bestselling Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

In these ten glittering stories, the award-winning, bestselling author Orange World and Other Stories takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns, a family makes their living wrestling alligators in a theme park, and little girls sail away on crab shells.

Filled with inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is the dazzling debut of a blazingly original voice.

“" Endlessly inventive, over- the- top, over- the- edge stories, all delivered in the most confident, exquisitely rambunctious manner. Fabulous fun." -- Joy Williams, author of "The Quick and the Dead" and "State of Grace" " Hallelujah! Karen Russell's work sweeps the ground from beneath your feet and replaces it with something new and wondrous, part Florida swampland, part holy water. A confident, auspicious, unforgettable debut." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" and "Absurdistan" " This book is a miracle. Karen Russell is a literary mystic, channeling spectral tales that surge with feeling. A devastatingly beautiful debut by a powerful new writer." -- Ben Marcus, author of "The Age of Wire and String "and "Notable American Women" " [Karen Russell] merges the satirical spirit of George Saunders with the sophisticated whimsy of recent animated Hollywood film. . . . Russell has powers of description and mimicry reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer . . . and her macabre fantasies structurally evoke great Southern writers like Flannery O' Conner." -- "Publishers Weekly " " Unforgettable, gorgeously imaginative tales. . . . 25- year- old wunderkind Karen Russell-- whose house- afire prose has already lit up the pages of "Granta "and "The New Yorker"-- proves herself a mythologist of the darkest and most disturbing sort." -- "Elle "" In spare but evocative prose, the 25- year- old conjures a weird world of young misfits and ghosts in the Everglades.Girls are swept off to sea in giant crab shells and fall in love with spirits; boys have Minotaurs for fathers and incurable dream disorders that cause them to live through humanity's greatest tragedies night after night." -- "W Magazine "" Hey smartie, this is for your literary side! Edgy- lit lovers will adore this debut short-story collection set in imaginative venues like icebergs." -- "Glamour " " [Russell' s] stories begin, in prose form, where the jabberwock left off, inspiring a dangerous, often unflattering loosening of the vocabulary. . . . Like Peter Pan, a reader thinks she is traveling in fantasy worlds until Russell's subconscious burbles up and jogs something in the childhood memory department. Uh- oh. Run for your life. This girl is on fire." -- "Los Angeles Times Book Review " " Originality, surrealism and eccentricity . . . one can sense Russell's enthusiasm and playfulness, both of which she has in spades." -- "Chicago Tribune Sunday" " Most writers her age haven't yet matched Russell's chief achievement: honing a voice so singular and assured that you' d willingly follow it into dark, lawless territory. Which, as it happens, is exactly where it leads us." -- "Time Out New York " " Already a master of tone and texture and an authority on the bizarre, Karen Russell writes with great flair and fearlessness. . . . The stories of shape-shifting and transmutation in "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" are so extreme and convincing, you fear for what Russelldreams." -- "The Denver Post " " Karen Russell is a storyteller with a voice like no other. . . . Laced with humor and compassion, Russell's work has the charm of children's literature adapted for adults." -- "People " " With this weird, wondrous debut, 25- year- old Russell blows up the aphorism ' Age equals experience.' She also suggests ' Write what you know' is similarly useless, unless she's a girl living on a Florida farm, two brothers who dive for the ghost of their dead sister, and children at a sleep- disorder camp. These stories are part Flannery O' Connor, part Gabriel Garci a Ma rquez, and entirely her own." -- "Entertainment Weekly "" ["St. Lucy' s"] is in multifarious ways a marvelous book in the tradition of George Saunders and Katherine Dunn." -- "New York Post "" Unforgettable. . . . Original and astonishing, joyful and unsettling, these are sto”

A San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
 

“A master of tone and texture and an authority on the bizarre, Karen Russell writes with great flair and fearlessness.” —Carlo Wolff, The Denver Post

 “How I wish these were my own words, instead of breakneck demon writer Karen Russell’s, whose stories begin, in prose form, where the jabberwock left off. . . . Run for your life. This girl is on fire.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review

 “Karen Russell is a storyteller with a voice like no other. . . . Laced with humor and compassion.” —Lauren Gallo, People

 “One of the strangest, creepiest, most surreal collections of tales published in recent memory. . . . Her writing bristles with confidence.” —June Sawyers, San Francisco Chronicle

 “Twent-five--year-old wunderkind Karen Russell . . . proves herself a mythologist of the darkest and most disturbing sort. . . . Ten unforgettable, gorgeously imaginative tales.”—Jenny Feldman, Elle

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia! (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA program, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2012 Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She lives in Philadelphia.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.