James Carlos Blake has long been one of my favorites, but his Wolfe
family saga may be his best work to date.--Ace Atkins, on The House of
Wolfe
Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner James Carlos Blake delves back
into the dark realms of the Wolfe family, a clan whose roots run deep on
both sides of the United States-Mexico border, and whose prevailing
interests straddle both sides of the law.
Twenty years ago, college student Axel Prince Wolfe--heir apparent to
his Texas family's esteemed law firm and its shade trade criminal
enterprises--teamed up with his best friend, Billy, and a Mexican
stranger in a high-end robbery that went wrong. Abandoned by his
partners, he was captured and imprisoned, his family disgraced, his wife
absconded, his infant daughter Jessie left an orphan. Two decades later,
with eleven years still to serve, Axel has long since exhausted his
desire for revenge against the partners who deserted him. All he wants
now is to see the woman his daughter has become, despite her lifelong
refusal to acknowledge him. When the chance comes to escape in the
company of Cacho, a young Mexican inmate with ties to a major cartel,
Axel takes it, and a massive manhunt ensues, taking the pair down the
Rio Grande and into a desert inferno. With his chance to see Jessie now
within reach, a startling discovery re-ignites an old passion and sends
Axel headlong toward reckonings many years in the making.
Racing across desolate landscapes from West Texas to the Gulf of Mexico,
The Ways of Wolfe is the taut story of one man's love for a daughter
he has never met and his fateful struggle with his own reckless spirit.
