Gone Wolf

In her first middle-grade novel, award-winning author Amber McBride explores Black pain, trauma, and ultimately, healing through the story of what might happen if white supremacists ceded from the rest of the country.

In the future, a Black girl known only as Inmate Eleven is kept confined—to be used as a biological match for the president's son, should he fall ill. She is called a Blue—the color of sadness. She lives in a small-small room with her dog, who is going wolf more often—he’s pacing and imagining he’s free. Inmate Eleven wants to go wolf too—she wants to know why she feels so blue and what is beyond her small-small room.

In the present, Imogen lives outside of Washington DC. The pandemic has distanced her from everyone but her mother and her therapist. Imogen has intense phobias and nightmares of confinement. Her two older brothers used to help her, but now she’s on her own, until a college student helps her see the difference between being Blue and sad, and Black and empowered.

Amber McBride’s debut young adult novel, Me (Moth), was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the 2022 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent, among many other accolades. Her most recent young adult novel is We Are All So Good at Smiling. Gone Wolf marks Amber McBride’s middle-grade fiction debut. She is a professor of creative writing at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.