A ROOM AWAY FROM THE WOLVES
A spellbinding ghost story set in a refuge for troubled girls from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us.
Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.
After too many lies and with trouble on her heels,
A spellbinding ghost story set in a refuge for troubled girls from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us.
Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.
After too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road with a fresh black eye and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets.
- Algonquin Young Readers
- Hardcover
- September 2018
- 336 Pages
- 9781616203733
Buy the Book
$18.95
About Nova Suma
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us. She also wrote Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. She grew up in the Hudson Valley, spent most of her adult life in New York City, and now lives in Philadelphia.
Praise
“Suma’s surreal writing examines the blurred edges of life, lies, freedom, and mother-daughter relationships, leaving the reader with questions and a tangled sense of wonder.”—Booklist
“Terrific . . . A Gothic love letter to secret places of New York City and the runaway girls who find them.”—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
“Nova Ren Suma surpasses herself with this gorgeously told, mesmerizing, tense and twisted story.”—Laura Ruby, National Book Award finalist and Printz-winning author of Bone Gap
Discussion Questions
1. In A Room Away from the Wolves Nova Ren Suma plays with the borders between reality and illusion. As you read, did you find your thoughts and assumptions about the real and the unreal shifting? If so, when?
2. Suma has said of this novel: “It’s a ghost story about the tangled bonds between mother and daughter, about complicated female friendship, and needing to find a place to belong.” What’s the source of the friction between Bina and her mother? Has Bina’s mother let her down? Is she justified in asking Bina to go away?
3. How is female friendship presented as complicated? Why is Bina drawn to Monet? How does your impression of Monet change over time?
4. Bina is angry at her mother, yet runs away to the place her mother once lived. Why? Is Catherine House as Bina expected? As the novel unfolds, how does it transform, literally and symbolically?
5. Bina tells the reader early that her lies have caught up with her. Knowing this, how do you judge truth in the story Bina tells?
6. The most obvious suggestion of a ghostly presence comes from Catherine’s portrait, with its moving eyes and shifting body. Are there other ghosts in the novel?
7. The author hints at people, objects, and events that link Bina’s life back home to life in New York. What links did you notice? What do they suggest about Bina’s experiences in both places?
8. What’s the importance of the opal in A Room Away from the Wolves? It’s said the best plots contain elements simultaneously surprising and inevitable. How does Suma build that effect with the opal?
9. A Room Away from the Wolves has been called a love letter to New York. What details show the author’s love of the city? Does the story influence your ideas and feelings about the place?
10. Is there one clear conclusion to and explanation of the story, or multiple possibilities? Where does the story leave Bina? Where might she go next?