The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: van den Berg, Laura. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

In “Last Night,” a middle-aged woman reflects on the time she spent in a mental hospital as a teenager after multiple suicide attempts. In the present, she keeps herself busy with her career and volunteering, but it is evident that she still struggles with mental health issues. She thinks often of the last night of her hospital stay, in which she snuck out with two of her friends and walked along a set of train tracks. She wonders what might have happened if a train came that night. She wonders if she or one of her friends have tried to jump in front of it.

In “Slumberland,” a woman grieves the loss of her young son, who died after an accidental fall. At night, the woman drives around her Florida neighborhood taking photographs of strangers. She is particularly drawn to a motel called Slumberland, where she has repeatedly seen guests threatening to jump from the roof. The narrator is perturbed by her neighbor, whom she hears weeping all night, every night. She goes next door to talk to the woman and discovers that she is not crying because she is sad; she is a phone sex operator for men who fetishize the sound of women crying. The narrator shows her neighbor her photographs and her neighbor points out what appears to be a ghost in one of them. The narrator believes this is her son and suffers a panic attack.

In “Hill of Hell,” a woman suffers the stillborn birth of a baby, and years later during her second marriage, she has another child who grows up to be a drug addict. After years of addiction, the daughter manages to attain consistent sobriety. Unfortunately, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly thereafter. While her daughter is on her deathbed, the narrator tells her about the stillborn, something she has kept secret from everyone. The narrator's husband overhears, but they never discuss this incident.

In “Cult of Mary,” the narrator goes on vacation to Italy with her mother, who has recently suffered a stroke. She believes this is likely her mother's last vacation, and both women find it difficult to enjoy their time there, with the specter of death hanging over the entire journey.

In “Lizards,” a husband and wife argue over the nomination of a Supreme Court justice who has been accused of sexual misconduct. The wife is disgusted by the allegations, but the husband suggests they should wait to hear all of the facts before judging him. The wife asks the husband if he has ever engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior, and he says he has not, but he is lying. She sees a lizard in their home and drops a wine glass. In flashbacks, it is revealed that the husband has been drugging his wife with sparkling water laced with a sedative, which he bought from another man in a parking lot. The husband catches the lizard under a glass, but rather than releasing it right away, he stares at it menacingly.

In “The Pitch,” the narrator's husband shows her a picture he found in his recently deceased father's belongings. It features her husband as a child with another boy. When the narrator asks about the other child, her husband claims not to see him. It is later revealed that the boy was his brother, who followed the voice of their dead mother up a tree in the woods and disappeared. The narrator's husband takes her to these same woods and climbs the tree himself. He never comes down.

In “Volcano House,” the narrator learns her twin sister has been gravely injured in a mass shooting and remains comatose. She drives back and forth from her home in New York to her sister's in Maine, visiting her sister in the hospital and supporting her brother-in-law. Flashbacks from the sisters' recent trip to Iceland demonstrate how very different they are; the narrator has always been relatively unstable and unable to commit to anything, while her sister is very reliable. Months pass with no change in the sister's condition, and at the end of the story, the narrator must decide if she can continue to be the support system her brother-in-law needs, even though it is antithetical to her normal way of life.

In “Friends,” a woman named Sarah arrives in a new city and has difficulty making friends. However, she soon meets a woman named Holly and the two begin spending time together. One day, Holly calls the narrator and asks her to accompany her on a train trip. Sarah agrees, but it soon becomes clear that Holly is planning to move to a new city and take Sarah with her. Sarah finds she can no longer remember the details regarding how she met Holly in the first place.

In “Karolina,” the narrator is visiting Mexico City for work four months after an earthquake and she runs into her former sister-in-law, Karolina. Throughout their marriage, Karolina claimed that the narrator's brother was abusive, and the narrator refused to believe this, despite witnessing several intense arguments between the two. Upon hearing Karolina's version of events again, however, she comes to realize she was telling the truth and must reevaluate her relationship with her brother.

In “Your Second Wife,” a woman has established a business in which she impersonates the recently deceased wives of grieving widowers. She is very successful, but one day she is kidnapped by one of the widowers. She breaks out of his trunk and runs away and thinks of the mistakes she has made in her life, such as abandoning her plans to go to architecture school and never telling her best friend she is in love with him.

In “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears,” a woman named Margot arrives in an Italian town to meet her sister Louise, a physicist meant to attend a conference at the Galileo Foundation for Scientific Culture. Louise calls to say she is not coming and Margot goes to the Galileo Foundation herself, taking Louise's name tag and mingling at a cocktail party. A drunk man approaches her, believing her to be Louise, and they have sex. Afterward, he realizes she is not Louise, and later confronts her in the streets. He asks her if she wants her sister's life, and she claims she does not; she is simply jealous of Louise's easy and uncomplicated way of living. At the end of the story, the hotel concierge is confused when Margot tells him her name, as she checked in using her sister's. He asks, “Who's Margot?” (201), and she is disturbed by her inability to answer.