THE WOLF HUNT by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Adam Shuster is a Jewish teenager in Silicon Valley who is accused of killing a Black student named Jamal Jones.  Adam’s mother, Lilach, the first-person narrator, claims, “But that’s not true.”  It actually takes quite a few pages for the murder allegation to take hold, but all signs point to Adam, who was being bullied by Jamal, unbeknownst to Adam’s parents.  The adult who does know about Adam and Jamal’s relationship is Uri, a self-defense instructor whom Adam has come to idolize.  Hence the overarching theme in this book is that parents don’t necessarily know their children very well.  To further that point, we find that Jamal’s bereaved mother was equally in the dark about her own son’s behavior.  In a side issue, Lilach draws damning conclusions about her husband’s conduct when he is out of town, proving that she is not totally in touch with either of her male family members.  Another theme that caught my attention is how the roles of sheep and wolf can so quickly be reversed when the victim decides to fight back and self-defense escalates into retaliation.  Lilach eventually becomes semi-unhinged, at first because of the treatment her son has endured and refused to share, and then later when she realizes that her son could be capable of murder.  Her husband’s denial that there is cause for concern doesn’t help matters.  Lilach undertakes an investigation of her own, but her findings do nothing to ease her mind.  I love psychological dramas like this, and Gundar-Goshen is very good at keeping us guessing.