Cry Wolf

Cry Wolf is an Animal Farm for the 21st century: a brilliant allegory of the political challenges we face in post-9/11 America. The farm animals' struggle to maintain their way of life against an influx of change is a powerful commentary on the importance of balancing freedom with justice, and on how easily even the best of intentions can destroy a community too caught up with what is "fair" to do what is right.

Lake's novel raises questions of in the heart of every devoted citizen: Does political correctness ever trump law? Should safety ever be compromised for the sake of inclusion? Are big government and judicial systems tools to create order, or do they provide chaos?"Lake writes vividly and characterizes shrewdly, producing an anti-immigration fable more polished than Orwell's anti-Communist satire." —Booklist

"What seems, at first, a gentle fable about farm animals who enjoy a kind of ordered liberty, turns quickly into a grim allegory about man's dark impulse toward the collective." —Laurie Morrow, political columnist, The Montpelier Bridge

"A charming and chilling fable that underscores the fragility of a world achieved with great difficulty and so easily undone by good intentions gone awry." —The Reverend John Newhaus, editor in chief, First Things

"In the great tradition of George Orwell's Animal Farm. I can only hope that it will be as widely read and will be as powerful an influence as was Orwell's masterpiece in awakening civilization to its present deadly peril." —American Spectator

"The inner logic of Cry Wolf is just right. Cleverly devised and well developed." —Chronicles magazine

"John Lennon sang 'Imagine there's no countries, and no religions, too'. In his superb limpid allegory, Paul Lake imagines these very things with terrifying precision." —Les Murray, poet and winner, TS Eliot AwardPaul Lake is an English and creative writing professor at Arkansas Tech University and the poetry editor of First Things. He is the author of Among the Immortals, Another Kind of Travel, and Walking Backward. He lives in Russellville, Arkansas.