Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Facts

June and her family live in Wetchester , New York. Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City.

 

The novel takes place between 1986 and 1987, and June's uncle, Finn, dies of AIDs. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system.  Without treatment it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The initial cases were a cluster of injecting drug users and gay men with no known cause of impaired immunity,

The book refers to the discovery of AZT, a drug to helpo ople with AIDs survive. Zidovudine (ZDV), also known as azidothymidine (AZT), was the first antiretroviral medication used to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS.

The book shows the stigma of the disease. There is a reference to Ryan White, a boy who had the disease and suffered attacks from other people. Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990) was an American teenager  who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States after his school barred him from attending classes following a diagnosis of AIDS.

A special place that June and her uncle visited was the cloisters in New York. The Cloisters, also known as the Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. The museum specializes in European medieval art and architecture, with a focus on the Romanesque and Gothic periods. G Its buildings are centered around four cloisters that were acquired by American sculptor and art dealer George Grey Barnard in France before 1913, and moved to New York.

Greta, June's sister, is part of the school play, South Pacific, and she plays Bloody Mary. South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers. The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart.

Some of the news June comment on is Klaus Barbie's crimes and the Iran-contra affair. 

Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German officer of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. In 1983, he was arrested and extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. 

The Iran–Contra affair was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an arms embargo at the time. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua.