It is easy, reading this book, to see why it was made into a movie. Thankfully this is not a main point, and the author demonstrates himself to be a sympathetic observer of a much-maligned animal. The author demonstrates something that I have noticed and found deeply concerning, and that is the fact that while many contemporary scientific types, including the author, show themselves hostile to biblical morality, there is a lot of sympathy between scientists and shamans, which suggests a larger religious legitimacy problem with contemporary science. The author appears to be at least somewhat aware of the relationship between himself and the local first peoples, which demonstrates that his awareness is not only for wolves, but also for people who struggle to be respected.
This leads the author to be more or less stuck a place that is seen by others as less than desirable, a sort of exile on behalf of scientific understanding. This book is a relatively short one of less than 200 pages, and while it tells the story of a man deep in the wilderness seeking to understand wolves on behalf of the Canadian military, the first part of the book explains the author’s own inability to properly find a place for himself as a successful academic or bureaucrat. To add to the poignant sort of feel of this book, the author notes that his conclusions about wolves were not taken seriously despite his observations and that despite having been informed of the real reason for caribou kills the response of the Canadian provincial government was to seek to increase still further their efforts to kill wolves. This book is written skillfully enough to encourage the reader to have more compassionate views about wolves even as it discusses the way that wolves have served as the scapegoat for the massive killing of caribou to feed people and their pet huskies, while blaming the wolves for the kills, even though the wolves were largely feeding on mice. In a book like this that relies on the author being a bit of a fish out of water engaged in the difficult task of trying to speak out against violence done to wolves, it is important that the author’s quirks and lack of understanding cuts against his desire to cut the Canadian political bureaucracy down to size. In general, I can say that I did appreciate this work, in large part because the author views himself as the subject of considerable humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously. I read this book on the recommendation of some friends of mine who saw and appreciated the 1983 movie adaptation of the book and thought that I would appreciate the book and its odd details.
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