The Wolves of Midwinter

The Story So Far

Reuben Golding, a young San Francisco reporter, finds his life changed forever by a visit to Nideck Point, an enormous mansion on the Mendocino coast, where he is bitten by a mysterious animal after the murder of the beautiful owner, Marchent Nideck. Reuben, grieving for Marchent, soon discovers he has inherited the house and also he has become a form of werewolf.

Fully conscious in his lupine form, Reuben is drawn to protect innocent victims of violence against evil attackers. Soon hunted by the police far and wide as the California Man Wolf—a popular superhero—he finds love with Laura, a woman who accepts him in wolfen form. They make their home at Nideck Point where an old portrait of “distinguished gentlemen” on the library wall seems somehow connected to the Wolf Gift that Reuben has been given.

Sinister scientists appear who seek to gain control over Reuben, pressing Reuben’s suspicious parents, Dr. Grace Golding and her husband, poet and professor Phil Golding, with urgent claims of concern for their “disturbed” son. Reuben’s brother, Father Jim Golding, having learned Reuben’s secret in the Confessional from Reuben, is powerless to do anything about what he knows.

Meanwhile Reuben, the inexperienced superhero, blunders in bringing yet another innocent into his realm when he accidentally bites Stuart McIntyre, the teen victim of a murderous gay bashing.

Reuben and Stuart are soon cornered at Nideck Point by the scientists who would take them prisoner, only to have the plot foiled by the surprise appearance of another Man Wolf before astonished law officers, paramedics, family members, and the newly arrived “distinguished gentlemen” from the library portrait.

Nideck Point becomes the haven of Reuben, Stuart, Laura, and the Distinguished Gentlemen, with elders Felix and Margon offering answers to all Reuben’s questions about his new nature, the defeated scientists, and the origin of the ancient tribe of Morphenkinder to which Reuben and Stuart now belong.