Excerpt from St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Behind me, the bellows intensify. I walk faster.

Most people think that gators have only two registers, hunger and boredom. But these people have never heard an alligator bellow. “Languidge,” Ms. Huerta, our science teacher, likes to lisp, “is what separates us from the animals.” But that’s just us humans being snobby. Alligators talk to one another, and to the moon, with a woman’s stridency.

Excerpted from St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell Copyright © 2006 by Karen Russell. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.