Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

THIRTEEN DOORWAYS, WOLVES BEHIND THEM ALL opens in 1946, at the very end of the story. Nineteen-year-old Frankie Mazza has found work in a diner, and she and her younger sister, Toni, are living on their own in rented room in Chicago. Now behind them are the traumatic years spent in an often abusive Catholic orphanage. After the death of their mother, their father had sent them and their older brother, Vito, to live "temporarily" at the orphanage. They clung to his promise that once he could revive his failing shoe making business, they would be able to come home. Watching over Frankie and narrating the story is Pearl, the ghost of a young woman who died during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Pearl is a restless ghost, roaming the streets of Chicago, where she meets other ghosts, including Marguerite, an African American ghost with a tragic past, and a red fox she names Wolf. Pearl watches as Frankie's father marries a woman with children of her own and takes only Vito when he moves to Colorado with his new family. She sees Frankie, despite the strict separation of boys and girls at the orphanage, begin a first romance with Sam, only to have him leave when he turns 18 and is drafted. Then Frankie's father returns, and the two girls finally leave the orphanage -- only to find themselves living in a tiny apartment ruled over by a very wicked stepmother. As the storyline unfolds for Pearl and Marguerite, memories from their past begin flooding back, and with those memories comes a desire for revenge.