St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

I have tried to read all the books that my children have read as they progressed through their high school and college careers, which is a very easy method for getting some adult education in and you only have to pay one tuition. 

My son read this short story for a college class, and while I loved Karen Russell's first book, 'Swamplandia', it did not occur to me to go back and read her collection of short stories--big mistake on my part, because this is great.  Here is a brief overview of the story--girls have been raised by a werewolf mother who decides that perhaps they would have more opportunities if they were to leave the woods and enter into more mainstream society.  This goes about as well as you would expect, and of course, sibling rivalry being what it is, some of the girls do better than the others, and the rest are jealous and hateful of that success, while some do worse, and the girls marginalize the ones who are not cutting it.  Every wolf for herself.

The thing that it reminded my husband and son of, which I had not really tumbled to, was the removal of Aboriginal children from their homes in Australia, a practice that went on well into the 1970's.  The stolen generations.  These children were treated as wild animals who needed to be tamed and taught the virtues of 'civilized' life, much like the girls raised by wolves in this story.