The Mad Wolf's Daughter

Strong messages of family, courage, loyalty, and kindness. It's important to keep an open mind and find the truth, even when it's different from what you've always been told -- and also to recognize that once a story about you is out there, you don't really control it anymore, true or false.

Drest's father and brothers are captured, imprisoned, and slated to be hanged. Battles, daggers, and swordplay are part of the story. One character is sometimes near death from his injuries from a murder attempt, and a knife-wielding enemy threatens to cut off Drest's ear. Past violence -- the murder of town healers (and abandonment of their small children in the woods) as witches when their patients die, the poisoning of a whole village, the killing of a young woman who fled an arranged marriage -- has far-reaching effects. Along the way, several innocents get rescued from would-be killers.

A character taunts an enemy, "You've a head like a pig's bladder and it's full of the same muck." A character says his ribs "hurt like the devil." Another mentions how he slipped dung into the food of another kid as a prank. Drest and her brothers swap insults like "you crab-headed squid gut," often pretty much as endearments.

Adults and kids drink ale as their everyday beverage. It's the Middle Ages. Drunkenness isn't an issue.