The story of she wolf Marta: Alpha female of her pack. After the death of her mare, however, life becomes tough. With a litter of pups and a toothless elder as only remains of her pack, Marta is the only one than can hunt. Will she be able to sustain her family?Overall just an okay book. If you like wolves or are interested in how wolf management works or whatnot this might be for you. I must say I went in expecting it to be a mostly fictional book with talking animals like "The Wolf Chronicles" or "Nashoga" but it actually turned out to be more of the London/Curwood non-talking and closer to realism stories. This, you'll either like or dislike. I personally found it really refreshing since I've read little xenofiction on wolves in our age. Curwood and London both wrote in the Goldrush-ish era. One of the central flaws it does have is that it tries to be realistic, yet still uses the Schenkel-system (using terms such as alpha/omega) which had been debunked by the time this got published already. But granted, I'm not as mad at it in this book in comparison to more recent onces since it only was 6 years or so since that theory got proven wrong. The plot is likable, and apparently based off of real events, as stated in the afterthoughts, and therefore also feels really realistic, and the harshness of nature does come through here wonderfully, like with London's works. It doesn't feel as new and refreshing as I hoped because of what I talk about in the next paragraph, but it did feel original. I will say, though, that the title as well might just have been "Wolf", since the Journey part is only like a third of the book or so. The characters in this book aren't the strongest aspect. One thing I did love about London's writing was the fact that he could write a realistic animal and give it tons of personality... Bowen kind of fails at this. Each wolf feels more or less like the same animal, the only exception to this being Greatpaws (was that his name?) who is more aggressive towards humans, but that's mostly where it stops. The wolves just feel like carbon copies and you'll start distinguishing by their main features like "that's the black wolf", "That's the toothless wolf" instead of by personality, which is essential when writing good characters, also in xenofiction. The lackluster characters also show a bit when sad things happen to them. You want to feel bad for them, but you don't care a lot for them since they are all pretty much the same. The main "character" here was a bit too much of a Mary Sue. I know that it's based off of true events and that stuff like this can happen in real life, but there are some times where you can see that the author obviously filled in the gaps of the story. Marta, the protagonist, somehow literally manages to keep all of her pups alive by hunting all on her own and endlessly killing Whitetail deer all by herself...that just seems too much of a stretch for me. Maybe it was true, but even if it was, my suspension of disbelief stretches only so far. Fact still remains that 9/10 pups die and 8/10 hunts fail (these statistics are approximate, of course) and this causes me to doubt some of the stuff written here. The pacing was okay. It did feel a bit 'wonky' at times (some parts went a bit fast/slow) but for the most part it held up alright. Overall, Wolf: The Journey Home is a good book. If you don't like xenofiction or wolves I don't recommend it, and I will always, even if you don't, still refer you to Jack London, who pulled this off like I've seen no one else do until now. Getting back on track, it's an alright book, but it could've been executed better. If you like wolves feel free to pick it up, but really, if you don't like them even the slightest bit, a definite pass.
There is nothing I love quite like old wildlife novels, which had an especially rich heyday from the 1940s-1960s and have since faded into something comparatively rare. While this book is much newer, it captures every inch of the tone of those old books, with only the radio collars and other wildlife-biologist interventions to update its time period a bit. Everything is about the wolves and their world and nothing hurts. Well, except for the harshness of the story itself, but as a helpful author's note explains, it's all based in fact.
Do You like book Wolf: The Journey Home (2005)?
sad ending to the story and the chapters were short but is was also a story which gives incite to the struggles of the wolf.
—Jay
This isn't a happy story so if your looking for a touchy, feely book about wolves skip this one. Unlike Julie of the Wolves in which most of the wolves have a happy ending almost none of these wolves do. Our wolf family gets shot, injured, hit by cars, starves to death, and put down for preying on livestock. But some how this book is still good. We bond with our wolves, we cheer when they make a kill, and we want to cry when something happens to one of them. So if you are welling to deal with al
—Caitlin
This book was really good, if a little sad, and is the story of a mother wolf and her pups after being relocated. Once moved begin to try to get back home to where they came from. This book was based off of the lives of real wolves that were being studied and because of this the wolves in the book are normal wolves. This is a very good read for anyone who loves animals, especially wolves and want to read a more natural book. Unlike many documentary's, the story is told in a very interesting way. Once you begin reading this book you won't want to stop until you know what happens to the wolves. Just a warning though, the more you love animals the more emotional you will be while reading this book. I loved it and it is one of my favorite books that don't have or need speech between the animals to make it interesting.
—Jennifer Priester
