Wolvers
A Novel
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
“Violent, tender, thrilling…He keeps our attention until the final, startling sentence.” The New York Times Book Review
From the Southern Book Prize winning author of Rednecks: a thrilling novel of pursuit, survival, and redemption between two species in the American Southwest
Broke, dispossessed, and angry at the government after losing his family’s New Mexico ranch, Trace Temple is looking for revenge. He’s living out of his truck when a shadowy militia movement hires him to take down the legendary she-wolf of the Dark Canyon pack, One-Eleven. But One-Eleven is no ordinary wolf. Cunning, fiercely protective of her young, and seasoned in the ways of men, she leads her pack deep into the forbidding desert peaks and canyons, always one step ahead of pursuit.
After a harrowing brush with death in the backcountry, Trace has a change of heart—only to be replaced by a professional hunter and assassin named Murdoch, who ruthlessly pursues his animal quarry while stalking Trace himself.
To survive, Trace must join forces with a pair of unlikely allies: a survivalist animal protector who deploys feral senses and deep wilderness skills to protect the wolves, and Imogen Cruz, a local rancher, childhood friend, and unrequited love of Trace’s early years. Together, they must fight to protect not only themselves and the Dark Canyon pack, but ultimately, the Gila Wilderness itself—the world’s first designated wilderness area.
In Wolvers, award-winning author Taylor Brown presents a suspenseful, thrillingly-written tale set at the burning edge of today’s Southwest, where once-extinct wolves have returned, the land is tinder-dry and fragile, and desperate men seek to reclaim what they believe is theirs to rule.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The overstuffed seventh novel from Brown (Rednecks) centers on the showdown between a hunter and a wolf in the mountains of New Mexico. The Gila National Forest is home to three packs of wolves reintroduced to the wild by the federal government. Their occasional attacks on livestock put a strain on the region's ranchers—some of whose families have been on the land for generations—so local power brokers turn to Trace Temple, a former rancher living out of his truck, to kill the wolf nicknamed One-Eleven, leader of the pack thought to be responsible for mangled cattle on nearby ranches. In the midst of stalking his quarry, Temple is tied up and left in the wilderness by a mystical antagonist called Horn. It's a promising setup, but Brown crowds the narrative with too many subplots, from the involvement of a militia to Trace's fraught entanglement with a childhood love interest. When a professional assassin named Murdoch enters the picture with a hidden agenda of his own, the pace slows to a crawl. Brown's affection for his four-legged predators is evident in extended sequences detailing their habits, pack dynamics, and hunting strategies, and he crafts some moments of nail-biting suspense, but the novel is too unfocused to maintain momentum. This one doesn't quite come together.
