Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles [Hardcover]

Pat Murphy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1996

Chronicles the adventures of Nadya, a wolf-woman in the American West, as she seeks a place to be wild and free and finds love, passion, and tragedy. By the author of the Nebula Award-winning The Falling Woman.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nadya embodies the 19th century idea of the Other: she is a woman, and she is an animal. Comfortable in her skin(s), a child of nature in many ways, she cannot fit into the artificial structure and mores of 19th century America. Although Nadya responds without artifice or duplicity to others (Rufus Jones, Elizabeth Metcalf), the priceless honesty she offers is undervalued and rejected. Nadya's search for a place in which she can safely be herself, woman and wolf, takes her across the plains, deserts, and mountains of western America. Fleeing to the utmost extremity of the continent, she stops and stands her ground on the Oregon shore.

From Publishers Weekly

A female werewolf roams the Old West in this deeply absorbing dark fantasy from Murphy (The City, Not Long After), whose The Falling Woman won the 1987 Nebula Award for Best Novel. While the story kicks off in rural Poland, it soon moves to the American frontier and the descendants of the Old World's hardy, furry peasants?foremost among them, Nadya Rybak, who tries to accommodate both her human and her lupine natures. The heart of the novel consists of Nadya's trek in the mid-1800s from Missouri to California. Having come through great personal tragedy brought about by a trusting nature and her own burgeoning sexuality, Nadya befriends the more cultured Elizabeth and the prepubescent Jenny. Together, the three young women fight their way across the swollen rivers, parched deserts and frosty mountains of the vast American frontier. En route, they encounter rattlesnakes, Indians, the remains of the cannibalistic Donner party and Elizabeth's repressed sexual urges, which lead to an affair between her and Nadya. While Murphy's description of the trek sometimes reads more like a historical travelogue than a fantasy, it features welcome bursts of supernatural flourishes. Especially fine are the passages dealing with the Cheyenne, in which the author highlights the strengths of Nadya's werewolf heritage by contrasting it with the Indians' spirituality. With its strong heroines and passionate storyline filled with romance, adventure and dangers both physical and moral, this novel will appeal to a wide array of readers, not just those who shiver with delight when the moon is full and the wolf's bane blooms.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (November 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312862261
• ISBN-13: 978-0312862268
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,733,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book! Highly Recommended!, November 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nadya (Wolf Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

Nadya is an action adventure book with a strong woman at its center. It's also a historical romance, set in the Old West. Oh, and it's also a werewolf tale. Nadya has it all, and Pat Murphy is a wonderful writer. The characters are people you want to know, the action is exciting, and a whole new world opens up with every chapter. An all around good read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The moon outshines the brightest of stars., March 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles (Hardcover)

Sometimes in our lives there comes along a book so enticing, that all others pale in comparison. Nadya is woman, wolf, truly wilderness incarnate; Pat Murphy invites us to explore a world far beyond our everyday experiences. In this book, we have the epic tale of a woman's struggles to find acceptance as she faces deception, betrayal and rejection. A wolf by the full moon she runs free of the toils she encounters as a human, but even the wolf has hardships it must face.

Pat Murphy takes the reader on a journey rich in detail, strong in emotion, and often biting in its satire of American society. Nadya's journey becomes our own as we travel not across the land, but across the mind, exploring her innermost beliefs, fears, hopes, and dreams. Through Murphy's extraordinary book, the reader is given the chance to experience a life free from the constraints of society and walk away with a piece of the wilderness, a piece of the wolf, in their own hearts.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A plot! A plot! My kingdom for a plot!, September 9, 1997

By 

[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nadya (Wolf Chronicles) (Mass Market Paperback)

Pat Murphy has been on my auto-buy list ever since her wonderful novel, _The City, Not Long After_. I picked up _Nadya_ mostly on my feelings about her as a writer and not so much for the werewolf angle.

The book follows Nadya, a werewolf during her life in the late 1800's, from her birth in the Midwest to her trek across country to California and settling in the Pacific Northwest. A variety of characters come and go, but very little plot is developed- in many ways it's more of a travelog than a novel. Each part (Growing up, travel, and life in the Northwest) is basically self contained, without any carryovers from bit to bit, so you end up feeling like the book is a series of short stories.

Worse, it's a series of short stories with the same, almost nonexistant plot. Nadya meets evil people who don't like wolves and good people who do, and survives despite the bad people. The third time around is just dull and predictable- you know as soon as she finds happiness with good people who like wolves, shortly evil people who don't will move nearby.

The book would be far more interesting if the evil characters were better written. Each is stamped from a mold: Evil people don't like wolves, are racists who want to kill Indians, treat women badly and log forests. None is the least bit sympathetic- we're given not a single redeeming quality in the vast majority. (At least the preacher in the first section is a bit better written.) The good guys are stamped from the mirror of the mold: each loves wolves, lives in harmony with nature, accepts all races and treats women as equals. After being hammered over the head with the same stereotypes again and again, you simply stop caring about the characters.

I hope that this book is just an abberation: Murphy can (and has) written far better.