Wolf in White Van

Wolf in White Van (2014), the debut novel of songwriter John Darnielle, tells the story of a man with a disfigurement who creates virtual worlds for others to enjoy, but who, when the game becomes real and tragedy strikes, must confront why he withdrew from society. The book received widespread critical praise and is popular with general readers. It won the ALA Alex Award in 2015, and it received nominations for the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the Debut-Litzer Award for Fiction.

Sean Phillips suffered a disfigurement while he was a teenager ten or so years ago. We don’t learn anything more specific about the injury in the early chapters, because Darnielle structures the novel in such a way that the rest of the book leads us back to the event and how Sean came to be in this position. All we see initially is a glimpse into Sean’s memory, as he recalls his parents bringing him home from the hospital and how he had his skin reconstructed.

Sean retreats from the world and is very isolated. He doesn’t appear to have friends and spends all his time working on the role-playing game he invents, Trace Italian. He earns a menial income from this game, whose purpose is to let players explore a post-apocalyptic United States and find the special fortress for which the game is named. Sean prides himself on designing a fortress no one will ever penetrate.



Sean interacts with the game players, including two teenagers who take the game to a new level. They try to emulate the game in real life, and they’re always sending him letters. It’s not clear whether Sean responds. One of the teenagers ends up dead and the other badly injured. Sean’s moral role in their suffering is considered by the court. He’s charged by the parents of the teenagers, but the court finds him not guilty.

The book begins many years after this court case, leaving breadcrumbs for the reader to follow to find out how Sean got his injuries. We learn the injuries aren’t connected to the game, because he designed Trace Italian while in the hospital recovering from the damage. Wolf in White Van moves between the past and present, and between narrative and invention.

Sean tells us more about the game. He describes becoming obsessed with the idea of a star-shaped construction surrounding medieval castles. He builds a backstory for the game: survivors of a nuclear apocalypse build a fortress designed like this, and other survivors learn about it and try to find it. Sean develops a whole city and dungeon complex under the fortress and insists it’s infallible.



He then looks back at the teenagers who took the game too seriously. A girl and her boyfriend became obsessive players and tried to recreate the game conditions in real life. When the girl, Carrie, died, and her parents brought a lawsuit against Sean, the judge threw the case out because there was no way to take it forward. He acknowledged it was tragic, but also, that there was no legal basis to sue Sean. Sean, however, can’t help but thinking back on it all, and wondering whether he is responsible, after all, and if the game is toxic.

Sean spends a lot of time thinking back on what he used to do before the accident and before he designed Trace Italian. He used to enjoy going grocery shopping and just getting out of the house with his parents as a teenager, but now he only goes out first thing in the morning to avoid meeting too many people—or anyone at all. All he has left is this game and where he plans on taking it in the future.

Sean also thinks back on the letters he received from game fans who don’t blame him for Carrie’s death, and those who now hate him and shame him for it. He does feel guilty, but he can’t do anything to change the past. Still, just because there was no legal responsibility doesn’t mean he’ll ever get over what happened to Carrie.



We then learn about Kimmy, Sean’s ex-girlfriend. She is the only one who ever visited him in the hospital other than his family, and she doesn’t care about his disfigured face. However, she often wants to talk more about the game than about how Sean feels about anything. This makes Sean remember counseling sessions he had before leaving the hospital, and how he’s never felt much other than loneliness.

This all culminates in the final chapter, where we discover what happened to Sean to land him in hospital in the first place. His feelings of loneliness lead him to take his father’s gun and shoot himself in the face. He doesn’t expect to survive. The book ends on this note, having gone full circle.