This is no Mad Max world of roving gangs, nor is it a futuristic world bent on torturing and killing teenagers. Show More Stupid, as one of the past nuclear conflicts is called and this is what I really enjoyed about the book Lewis' handling of the post-apocalyptic setting. I won this book in a LibraryThing giveaway with the understanding that I would give an honest review. It’s a truly heart wrenching story with an ending that left me in tears. I grew to love Elka and suffered when she suffered and rejoiced when she rejoiced. How often is this girl going to keep running into evil men? But it picked up in the last quarter of the book and broke open my heart. On the negative side, there were parts of the book that I felt were too repetitive. But the author managed to keep me glued to the pages and I had to keep reading. There are horrendous scenes in this book and at times I thought it was going to be too much for me to continue to read.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted.

She has horrible secrets locked in her mind that she’s been unable to face. This isn’t a typical cat and mouse story and becomes quite a deep psychological study of a young girl who was a victim of an evil man for ten years. But the apocalypse takes second place to the nail-biting story of the wild, almost feral Elka and her journey to find her parents. It’s a harsh world with poisoned lakes and people whose sole purpose is to survive. This book takes place in the future after the world is forever changed by the Conflict. Then when she’s 17 years old, she learns that he’s a killer and now he’s after her. He taught her everything she needed to know to survive in the wild. The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape-told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity. If she's going to survive, Elka will have to turn and confront not just him, but the truth about the dark road she's been set on. But judging by the trail of blood dogging her footsteps, she hasn't left Trapper behind-and he won't be letting his little girl go without a fight. Armed with nothing but her knife and the hard lessons Trapper's drilled into her, Elka flees into the frozen north in search of her real parents. And now that Elka knows the truth, she may be his next victim. But the man Elka thought she knew has been harboring a terrible secret. In the years since then, he's taught her how to survive in this desolate land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other.

She was just seven years old, wandering lost and hungry in the wilderness, when the solitary hunter took her in. Elka barely remembers a time before she knew Trapper.

The wolf road by beth lewis