When I was a kid and I did something particularly naughty or uncouth (tracking mud into the house or forgetting to flush the toilet come to mind), my grandmother often said, "What do you think you're doing? You act like you were raised by wolves." According to this novel, my grandmother was wrong: somebody raised by wolves can turn out to be surprisingly civilized.
The totally implausible plot begins when a young man who has been part of a wolf pack is discovered in the woods by some fur trappers. As it turns out, he is the lone survivor of a plane crash which happened when he was three years old. Through happenstance, while he is being prepared for transport to a permanent home at a mental facility for the incurably incompetent, he is spirited away by a divorcee who takes pity on him. Curiously, nobody notices that he never shows up at his scheduled destination. Under the woman's tutelage, within a matter of only a few months he has learned to read and write and play chess and can pass himself off in polite small-town society as an exchange student. And then he falls in love (lust) with his rescuer. As if that is not enough complication, cats and dogs and ultimately people are killed in the community by having their throats slit. Can you guess who is blamed when his secret past is outed?
This novel has an intriguing concept, but the way the premise is handled turns it into a B-grade romance novel with a bit of (supposed) mystery thrown in. Actually, the identity of the killer is easily recognized from the beginning, so the only suspense is whether or not the Wolfman will be killed by an angry mob (with pitchforks, maybe. haha).
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