Wolf in Wanderley

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By HM Kingsley

There's a particular kind of character that Dave J. Andrae writes really well, and Wolf Barnes is the finest version of him yet. An aging filmmaker who has spent his life making art on his own terms, now facing the very real possibility that the world has moved on without him. It's a premise that could easily tip into self-pity or nostalgia, but Andrae never lets it go there. Wolf is too self-aware for that, and too stubborn, and that combination makes him genuinely compelling company.

Reading this book feels like settling into something that has its own distinct rhythm and refuses to rush. The Florida setting is rendered with the same warm, slightly off-kilter specificity that made Andrae's previous work feel so lived-in. Wolf putting down roots in a new place while simultaneously trying to compile a lifetime of creative work into a single Blu-ray before it's too late is quietly heartbreaking and oddly funny at the same time, which is exactly the balance Andrae seems to aim for.

The arrival of Maisy and Katherine next door gives the story its human warmth, and the looming threat of Lenny Medway gives it its pulse. What's smart about the way the crime element is handled is that it never overwhelms the more intimate story at the center. The danger feels real but it also feels like a metaphor, the external version of everything Wolf is already fighting internally.

What Andrae is really writing about here is what it means to keep making things in a world that increasingly doesn't know what to do with you. That's a question worth sitting with, and Wolf in Wanderley sits with it beautifully.

For readers who like their page-turners to also make them think, this one is absolutely worth your time.

About the Author

Dave J. Andrae

Dave J. Andrae was born on the Autumnal Equinox of 1979 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he grew up. He currently lives in Florida. Andrae is a novelist and multidisciplinary artist with a background in film and music. He holds a BFA in film and has been making and releasing art in different mediums for nearly thirty years. All three of his books to date--Wolf in Wanderley, Rem's Chance, and The Friends of Allan Renner--are character-driven, blended-genre works with literary fiction elements primarily set in southwest Florida.