Primary opposition comes from wolf biologist Helen Ross, a despised Easterner hired to keep the wolves safe from ranchers and more selective about their predation. The wolf-hating cowboys are led by quintessential alpha male Buck Calder, the region's biggest rancher, bully and philanderer. After the book opens with the killing of a family dog by a stray wolf, the battle lines are quickly and clearly drawn. The bitter debate over the reintroduction of wolves into the American West provides the hook. Montana is again the setting, animals are crucial to the plot and a love story between dissimilar people is the heart-tugger. But a less dramatic but more meaningful ending would have made an okay book good, and throwing away the small-town stuff would have made a good book great.Fans of Evans's bestselling debut, The Horse Whisperer, may find that this issue-oriented follow-up is a case of deja vu. I did learn a lot from this book, and Montana comes across as a character in its own right.

He’s not contrite because his own attitudes were wrong he’s contrite because he got caught. It’s not so much a case of justice being done or not, but that the main bad guy, although he gets his comeuppance, appears unchanged by it. A lot of these added very little to the plot, and some made caricatures of otherwise interesting characters.īut what really cost the book a star or two was the ending. What detracted from the book was the soap-opera background of the various small-town loves, likes, hatreds and other affairs. I couldn’t put the book down at times like those.

There is one scene in the middle where a pack confronts an old moose, which scene must surely go down as a classic of writing about nature. What I liked a lot about the book were the scenes set in nature, with both man and animal. That sets the scene for a conflict that gets uglier and uglier. Little can the wolf know it chose the wrong ranch, and the ensuing drama sets man against wolf and environmentalists against ranchers. The wolf is hungry and ventures on to a ranch in Montana.

The book opens with a great scene: an alpha wolf on the hunt. I have never read the book that made Nicolas Evans famous, The Horse Whisperer, so was quite keen to find out what all the fuss was about.

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