St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

This story is narrated by Jacob, the son of a Minotaur called Asterion and a human woman, Velina. The family, which includes younger twin girls Maisy and Dotes, live on a leased farm in what seems to be the 1840s during the Westward Migration in America.

At the start of the story, Velina is reading an almanac which details the promise of the West, with open green fields and land for the taking. This appeals to Asterion, who resents working a leased farm near a lunatic asylum and dreams of green pastures on which to graze, as he is half-bull. He previously worked in the rodeo before retiring.

At first, Velina protests, causing Asterion to paw the ground and ask her when she stopped dreaming of something better. He promises to pull the wagon himself and that the family will learn how to survive on the Trail. Jacob is startled at how “a minute ago, there had been an opened book, a crazy notion—we could go, or we could stay—and now, not five minutes later, the book was shut. We were going. Simple as that” (107).

After a month on the Trail, the family struggles to find water and food, which they beg from the other wagons that travel with them. They are part of a group of 12 families, including one spinster who usually lags behind the group.

Jacob explains how the group had started out so optimistic and happy but have grown surly and depressed. They pass by graves dug at the side of the Trail, and the Minotaur’s “back is carved solid with red welts. His skin is coming off in patches” as he pulls the wagon (108).

They realize they have over-packed their wagons and everyone begins leaving their prized but ultimately unnecessary possessions behind them.

Velina drives the wagon as Asterion pulls, while the girls sit inside. To spare the weight, Jacob walks in the back of the group with the lumberwomen, who ask about his father and remark that it’s lucky the children look like their mother. The group often asks Asterion to help with physical tasks, due to his size and mythic build. This makes Jacob proud. Velina, meanwhile, believes that all the men are going to kill themselves chasing the dream of the West, including Asterion.

Asterion tells Jacob not to pay attention to his mother’s grim outlook, because she “can’t see the West the way I can […] everything will be different when we get there” (112).

One day after making camp by a stream, Jacob goes to play ball with his friend Clem, as well as Maisy and Dotes. While they are playing, Clem notices Asterion nearby in the woods. He is scratching his head on a stump like a bull; this embarrasses Jacob, since his father “preferred to take care of his animal functions in private” (113). Angry, Asterion takes the twins back to the camp. Clem asks Jacob why he doesn’t resemble his father. In response, Jacob tries to act like a bull and, when Clem pities his attempts, fights with his friend.

That night, while most of the camp has a raucous drunken barbecue, Jacob asks his father to cut his hair, an old custom. When finished, Asterion asks Jacob if he can feel his own horns, “ingrown, but every bit as sharp” (116).

Later, the group weathers its first storm, and Jacob is hurt that his father doesn’t ask him to help secure the camp—a job for men. Watching how miserable his mother and sisters are, he wishes they’d never left their old life.

After the storm, one of the group, Olive, goes missing, and the others presume that wolves killed her. The group finds her mule and pieces of her clothes, but the party balks when Asterion suggests they go looking for her, even if just to bury her body. Instead, they divide Olive’s belongings.

When the party crosses a river, Jacob is upset to realize that he cannot tell his father apart from the other cattle pulling the carts for a moment. However, he tells Clem that he is not worried that his father might not make it to the West.

Velina and Asterion continue to squabble, as Velina increasingly wants to turn back. Jacob realizes that “everyone wants to go home, and no one can agree on where that is anymore” (120). This is true of the other families as well.

The family gradually moves to the back of the group of wagons as Asterion’s strength continues to fail. Jacob takes over as the driver when Velina gives up. They struggle to find food; once, Asterion trades a piece of their wagon for some corn, which angers Velina. To escape the ensuing argument, Jacob and his sisters ask Clem if they can sleep in his family’s wagon. Clem’s family refuses because some of the party believe that the Minotaur is giving lice to the children.

Later, Velina wakes Jacob from where he is sleeping under the wagon and tells him that they are parting ways from his father. She wants to take the children and turn back. Jacob refuses loudly, waking Asterion, and Velina backs down. In the morning, several of the wagons are missing as some families have turned back. However, Jacob then witnesses his parents saying “I love you” to each other and muses that “so much of what passes between my parents on the Trail is illegible to me. It’s as if they speak a private language, some animal cuneiform, pawing messages to each other” (127).

When one family’s oxen die in the traces, the twins ask if their father is going to also die. Velina is helpless to answer.

At last, they reach the midway point—a desert called the Great Sink. Everyone is depressed and the twins are sick, but there is no doctor to help them. Asterion takes Jacob and puts him on his great shoulders, telling him to look how far they’ve come, and then look West, to where they are going. However, Jacob cannot tell the West from the East, and has “no idea what my father saw out there, or what he wanted me to see” (130). But he lies and agrees that he sees something exciting.