The titular story in the collection is narrated by Claudette, who is the daughter of a pair of werewolves. She and her siblings are human, as lycanthropy skips a generation.

A group of nuns, who want to civilize the girls, take Claudette and her sisters to St. Lucy’s. When they first arrive, they act like wolves, destroying their rooms and marking the shared bedroom with urine. The pack of 15 sisters is “hirsute and sinewy and mostly brunette. We had terrible posture. We went knuckling along the wooden floor on the calloused pads of our fists, baring row after row of tiny, wood-rotted teeth” (226).

Sister Josephine, the head nun, advises Sister Maria de la Guardia to be patient, as the girls at St. Lucy’s are wilder than at other homes.

Claudette explains that, as werewolves, humans and wolves alike ostracized her parents, so they lived in caves near the forest’s edge. They had eagerly accepted the nuns’ offer to civilize their children and make them bilingual. However, neither the parents nor the children realized this would be a permanent move.

On their first day, the nuns allow the pack to run around the grounds, acting wolfish. This is Stage 1 of the process. They dig holes, kill squirrels, and howl. They smell everything with fascination. In the afternoon, Sister Maria goes around assigning names to all of the girls. The nuns christen the oldest sister “Jeanette,” while the youngest and wildest sister is called “Mirabella.” It is at this point that Claudette gets her human name, too.

In Stage 2 of the taming of the wolf girls, they “realize that they must work to adjust to the new culture,” which comes more naturally to some than others (229). Claudette begins to drill into her head that she must keep her mouth closed and shoes on, though she struggles at first.

Although the girls are miserable and could easily leave, they know that they cannot go back to their parents when they sent them to St. Lucy’s to help them. They eventually give up trying to mark their bedroom with urine, since the nuns clean it up every day and erase the smells. Almost all of them have started to walk on two feet—only Mirabella refuses to adjust. The girls worry about Mirabella and try to correct her.

Nevertheless, not everything was completely new, for “the main commandment of wolf life is Know Your Place, and that translated perfectly” (231). The pack all instinctively tries to please the humans in power.

The pack begins to hate Jeanette, who adapts most quickly. She starts speaking before any of the others and does most other things first as well. Claudette, meanwhile, is content to remain middle-of-the-pack. She has a knack for languages and learns to read almost as quickly as Jeanette but keeps this to herself.

Still, the pack hates Mirabella the most and start to avoid her. They now see her four-legged walking as strange and unnatural. They hear rumors of former wolf-girls who failed to adapt running back to the woods.

One day, as a test, the sisters tell Claudette to take Mirabella to feed the ducks. Claudette tries to distance herself from her sister, but Mirabella thinks it is a game. When Claudette falls and Mirabella tries to wrestle playfully with her, Claudette returns to some of her wolf ways to chase her sister away. The sisters quickly find them, but after this incident, Claudette must watch films of failed wolf-girls who cannot function in human society. The sisters reinforce the threat: “do you want to end up shunned by both species?” (235).

Claudette begins avoiding Mirabella and one day refuses to help her sister lick her wounds, thinking: “how can people live like they do?” (235). This indicates that she has entered Stage 3, characterized by a rejection of their former wolf culture.

The pack overhears the nuns talking about Mirabella. They are concerned that she refuses to adapt and feel that they must do something about this. Claudette does not warn her sister, admitting she prefers that Mirabella leaves.

The pack then meets a group of purebred girls raised in captivity. They come to the home to play checkers with the pack and are overly polite about the game. They let the wolf-girls win and do not react when they get restless and ruin the board. Claudette pities the girls, thinking how horrible it would be to be bred in captivity and “always homesick for a dimly sensed forest, the trees you’ve never seen” (237).

The pack is allowed to go on bicycle trips to town, though Mirabella always runs after them. They are also learning to dance, but only Jeanette can do the Sausalito. So, the nuns decide to throw a Debutante Ball and bring all the brother wolves from the Home for Man-Boys Raised by Wolves.

Determined to do well, Claudette begins practicing the Sausalito in private. One night after practicing, she finds Jeanette crying on a windowsill because of a book she is reading. However, Claudette doesn’t want to admit to her yet that she can read.

The pack enjoys church on Sundays because of the music. They learn to turn their howls into song, which pleases the nuns. The pack enters Stage 4, which is when they “begin to feel more comfortable in their new environment” and life begins to make sense (240).

On the day of the ball, Mirabella surprises Jeanette and Claudette in the hall. Jeanette tries to speak to her and encourage her, but Mirabella bites her ankle and tries to drag her into a closet. Rather than help her sister, Claudette goes to practice her dance one last time.

That evening, the brothers arrive but they no longer look or smell like the brothers the pack remembers. Claudette stands at the punch bowl making small talk with Kyle about the weather. All the girls are wearing polka dot dresses in different colors. When Kyle compliments her scene, Claudette becomes defensive, knowing that she now “smelled like a purebred girl, easy to kill” (242). She starts to snarl at him.

At that moment, Sister Maria announces that the Sausalito is about to start, and Kyle pushes Claudette onto the dance floor. However, in the spotlight, she suddenly forgets all the steps and “the only thing my body could remember how to do was pump and pump” (243). She inadvertently wiggles out of her shoes as she tries desperately to keep her mouth shut.

Frantic, she looks over to Jeanette for help, but Jeanette only smiles and mouths “not for you” (244). But before Claudette can unleash a howl, Mirabella tackles her. Mirabella has chewed through the restraints the nuns had placed on her. She is trying to protect her from some unseen threat.

Claudette is grateful to Mirabella, but to save face, tells her that she has ruined the ball and that she didn’t want her help. The pack rallies behind her to shout that Mirabella cannot adapt and should go back to the woods.

The next morning, the girls learn that the sisters expelled Mirabella. The pack is happy that the nuns have finally done something and go running outside to howl—their last howl as a pack. They graduate soon after, entering Stage 5, where they are “able to interact effectively in the new cultural environment” (245).

When nearly finished at St. Lucy’s, Claudette is allowed to go visit their parents. She gets escorted by a woodsman and takes a picnic basket with her. When she enters the cave where her parents live, she notices that it looks much smaller than she had recalled.

At first, her parents don’t recognize her and sniff at her. But their mother recognizes her at last and they wait to hear what she has to say. The story ends with Claudette telling her first human lie: “I’m home” (246).