When the Wolf Comes Home

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child death, and child abuse.

Jess and the boy wrestle with fear throughout the narrative. Both characters initially believe that they are controlled by their fears, which in turn feeds their negative self-image and makes them doubt themselves. Throughout the novel, Jess must confront the struggle to be brave as she seeks to protect both herself and the boy from the creature.

Jess struggles with her inner voice’s accusations of cowardice and her intense fear of abandonment. She has turned to improvisational comedy as a means of working through her fears but still struggles to feel brave and self-assured when off the stage. Jess suppresses her own needs because she is afraid of being abandoned the moment she decides to focus on herself, which illustrates how her fears spring from her complicated relationship with her father: Cookie accuses Jess of putting others’ needs ahead of her own to ensure that others will not abandon her the way Tommy did. Jess finds a mirror to her fear in the boy, who is trying to navigate his own complicated relationship with his father.