Wolf Hollow

Tobias Jordan, originally a carpenter from Maryland, was a soldier in the First World War who returned to America shell-shocked, because of the killing he perpetrated and saw. He is a wanderer, who “walked the woods and valleys in his long, black oilcloth coat and his black boots, long black hair and beard, and always three long guns slung across his back” (22-23). Toby lives in a smokehouse, eats a diet of game and berries, and is regarded as “strange” by the community (23). While he is a loner, Toby trusts Annabelle and the other McBrides, who are compassionate about his suffering, and he accepts food and the offering of a camera from them.

Toby lives in a fragile peace with the community until Ruth’s injury and Betty’s disappearance cause him to become a scapegoat. Wolk guides the reader through Annabelle’s observations of Toby, thereby alerting them that contrary to the community’s beliefs, his strangeness does not automatically make him culpable; his eccentricity is the result of deep, unprocessed trauma. While Toby is able to shear off his beard, become vulnerable before Annabelle, and even play the hero enough to rescue Betty and win Aunt Lily’s admiration, Wolk makes it clear that much of Toby’s trauma is indelible. When he walks off into the woods, refusing to accept the McBrides’ kindness, and puts himself in the path of the police who shoot him, Sarah tells Annabelle that his actions might be explained by his feeling that “he had had enough of this world” (278). Through the character of Toby, Wolk shows that some forms of psychological damage are irreversible, and asks Annabelle, and by extension the reader, to have compassion regardless. 

Blonde, blue-eyed Betty Glengarry looks “sweet as a snap pea” and has a name that resembles one “from a song” (6). Her pretty, guileless exterior fools many of the doting adults in the community into trusting her over Toby. However, Annabelle, one of her first victims, quickly learns that she is “dark-hearted,” sadistic, and will stop at nothing until she gets her way (1). While Wolk gives the reader detailed insight into why Toby is strange, she does not elaborate on why Betty is mean. The reader only learns that Betty came from the city to live with her grandparents in the countryside because of her misbehavior.

When Annabelle visits Betty’s sickbed, she learns that Betty’s father is “gone,” but not what is behind his absence (58). Although the text does not specify that Betty feels that she has a score to settle with her father, it shows that she seeks to dominate in her relationships with the men she encounters. First, there is the older schoolboy, Andy Woodberry, who she seeks to tease, impress, and conscript as a partner in crime. Then, there is Toby, who chases her off after she tries to intimidate Annabelle, and who leaves her lying “back in the undergrowth, wide-eyed and almost smiling” (52). Arguably, Betty is impressed with Toby because she feels that she has met her match—the one person who will stand up to her. Betty’s fascination leads her to scapegoat Toby.

While Betty is ruthless when it comes to the well-being of humans and animals, she is also endangering her own safety, as she lies back in a bed of poison ivy and makes her deathly trip down the well. Here, Wolk shows a sense of karma at work, as the harm that Betty inflicts circles back to her. However, the harm that follows Betty also echoes Annabelle’s wishes. Annabelle wishes for Betty to be severely punished on numerous occasions; for example, when she says “If I went to hell for wishing a plague on her, then that’s where I would go” (53). Such sentiments from gentle, justice-loving Annabelle show that she too has the bitter emotions that cause humans to declare war on one another.  

Ruth, “a dark-haired, red-lipped, pale girl with a quiet voice and perfectly ironed dresses,” is Annabelle’s friend, and the girl she shares a desk with at school (5). Unlike Annabelle and most of the children at school, who come from farming stock, Ruth is the daughter of a bookkeeper who only has a tabby cat for a pet. Like Annabelle, Ruth loves to read; however, the latter is far more delicate and timid, and she is less capable of standing up to Betty’s bullying. Like the quail, or Annabelle’s little brother, James, Ruth, is an innocent victim of Betty’s malice.

After the accident, Ruth and her family move to Sewickley, a city, and Annabelle never sees her again. The fact that Ruth’s family only moved to the countryside because they inherited a house there, and “never meant to stay so long,” heightens the freaky accidental nature of Ruth’s victimhood (86). The strange nature of Ruth’s accident becomes a catalyst for the climate of hysteria that surrounds Betty’s disappearance.

Annabelle’s father, John McBride, is a farmer and a prominent man in the community. His ancestors have the best headstones in the churchyard, and he raises Annabelle and her brothers to be hard-working, responsible, and independent. He does not sugarcoat the truth, correcting Annabelle’s misapprehension that concentration camps are where “people went to think hard thoughts” (18). Similarly, he allows Annabelle to accompany him and the other men in the search for Betty, because he knows that it is important to her. He does not banish her from this enterprise because of her gender, as other men of his generation might have done.

Unlike others in the farming community, including Aunt Lily and Betty’s grandparents, the McBrides judge people on their character and hold few prejudices against those who are different. They neither ostracize Mr. Ansel for being German, nor do they automatically suspect that Toby is responsible for harming Ruth and Betty because he is a wanderer. Nevertheless, their understanding that others in the community have such prejudices, enables them to explain the makeup of their world to Annabelle, and by extension the reader. 

Sarah McBride, Annabelle’s mother, married John at the age of 16 and gave birth to Annabelle at 17. Aged only 28 at the time of the novel, Sarah is “not much more than a girl herself, in charge of three generations and a good bit of farm work too” (19). She is continually asking Annabelle to help with the chores after school and is tough enough to not “expect anything to be easier than it was” (19). While Sarah is a bastion of responsibility and hard work, she is also deeply wise and insightful. She is the first of the adults to recognize that the heroic stranger, Jordan, is Toby, and she helps Annabelle to accept that she can only control her actions and not the outcomes of events. She is the embodiment of tough love when she tells Annabelle that “sometimes things come out right […] sometimes they don’t” (261). As the novel progresses, both Toby and John tell Annabelle that has inherited her mother’s authoritative tone, as well as her perspicacity.

Annabelle’s Aunt Lily is a caricature of a 1940s spinster. She is a “tall, thin, ugly woman who might have been handsome as a man,” and she is terrifying to Annabelle for her “big, square teeth and her feverish devotion to God” (19). While Aunt Lily makes numerous judgements on good and evil, pronouncing Betty to be the former and Toby to be the latter, she is wracked by insecurities. In order to compensate for her unmarried status in a society which values women as homemakers, Aunt Lily waxes lyrical about her religion and the responsibilities of her job as a post-mistress. Her sexual frustration is evident in her frequent hair-brushing and the way she practices “dance steps in the small patch of floor at the foot of her bed” (19).

The small patch of floor perhaps metaphorically represents the opportunities a woman like Aunt Lily would have to express her sexuality. This is painfully evident in her flirtatious reaction to Toby when he is in the disguise of Jordan. While she has been dragging Toby’s name through the mud, she greets Jordan with “a soft voice” Annabelle has never heard (205). To Aunt Lily, who is engaged in her own narrative as well as the main one, Jordan represents an opportunity for romance and perhaps a different sort of future. She is brought brutally back to earth when she discovers that Toby is Jordan, and that he has died because of a police search that she was in support of. At the end of the novel, she shows some remorse for her actions. 

Annabelle describes her grandfather, the patriarch of her Scottish-descent family, as “a serious man who always told me the truth, which I didn’t always want but sometimes asked for anyway” (9-10). He is the one who tells her about how Wolf Hollow got its name, and about the wolves who were trapped and killed because the number of them presented a threat. He presents a world picture of violence, fear and competition between the farming community and the wolves that counteracts Annabelle’s hereto peaceful view of the hills she comes from. As the narrative unfolds, Annabelle will see that her grandfather’s bleak explanation of the place is the one that has the most in common with reality. Wolf Hollow was, and continues to be, a community that tries to contain those who are different. 

Annabelle’s teacher, Mrs. Taylor, has the challenge of teaching multiple grades and pupils with varying levels of commitment to learning at Wolf Hollow’s schoolhouse. Aware that some of her students are “big boys who were useful on their farms and didn’t see the point of going to a school that wouldn’t teach them to sow or reap or herd anything,” pragmatic Mrs. Taylor gives up and teaches them lessons that are “shorter than they might have been” (7). She knows that academics are less important in a farming community that is still suffering from the after-effects of the Depression and might see some of its young men go to war.

Still, despite the sub-optimal conditions in her schoolhouse, Mrs. Taylor enjoys a certain level of status in the community. She has her own car, which she uses to drive Ruth and Annabelle home during her emergencies, and she is one of the authorities that Sarah McBride refers to by their title, rather than by their proper name. This indicates that the community had a historical veneration for educators, even though the current climate has made them prioritize the harvest and survival over education. 

Betty’s love-interest and the witness to some of her crimes, Andy Woodberry is a tall, “not a bad-looking boy and [is] cleaner than some” (47). However, like Betty, he is a bully who gains respect because others are afraid of him. Just as Betty is impressed with Toby because he challenges her, Andy is impressed with Betty when she outsmarts him.

The son of dairy farmers, Andy only turns up to school when the weather is bad or he otherwise needs “a change of scenery” (45). Reversing the gender roles of a patriarchal society, Betty is the initiator of the flirtation between herself and Andy, in addition to the trouble-making schemes of rock-throwing and taunting Toby. Betty is not the only girl who is able to outsmart Andy, as Annabelle gets him to confess Betty’s crimes within earshot of gossipy telephone operator, Annie Gribble. While Andy shows a more sensitive side in displaying sadness about Betty’s death, his small-mindedness with regard to Toby, when he says “I hope they kill him twice,” reflects the worst attitudes of Annabelle’s community (269). 

A German who originally went by the name of Faas, Mr. Ansel is “friendly and kind” (64). However, his German origins and the fact that his “tongue” is “forever German no matter how many years he’d lived in these hills”, makes him a figure of suspicion at a time when America is at war with Nazi Germany, and people are looking for someone to blame (65). Annabelle’s mother is aware that Mr. Ansel has been the victim of other pranks, such as rats in his mailbox and poisoned crops. Equipped with this knowledge, Annabelle’s mother, amongst others, assumes that he is the intended target of the rock that hit Ruth. The community’s response to Mr. Ansel shows that, even before Betty’s arrival, there was division and a predisposition to scapegoat. However, Betty escalates the matter by directing the attack to Mr. Ansel’s person, rather than his property.