Wolf: A Journey Home
Encyclopedia
Wolf: The Journey Home, originally titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, is a 1997 American young-adult novel written by 'Asta Bowen. Originally published by Simon & Schuster
with line drawings by Jane Hart Meyer, it was retitled and reprinted without illustrations in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Based on true accounts of the Pleasant Valley, Montana, wolf pack, the novel traces the life of a female alpha wolf named Marta after the forced relocation of her pack in 1989 to an unfamiliar territory. Terrified, Marta abandons her pack and begins a journey in search of her home; she eventually arrives in Ninemile Valley, where she finds a new mate with whom she starts a new pack.
Bowen was prompted to write the story of the relocated wolves after becoming outraged over the continued poaching
of wolves in the protected areas of Ninemile Valley. She spent four years researching wolves while working on the novel. In recounting the fates of the animals at the end, she expresses hope in the ideals behind efforts to restore wolf populations. Nominated for a 2006 Teens' Top Ten award by the American Library Association
, the novel was praised by critics. Two praised Bowen's ability to avoid anthropomorphism
while capturing the essence of wolf behavior and life. Another also praised the story's highlighting of the difficulties in wolf relocation
programs.
, is alpha female in a small pack in Pleasant Valley, Montana, that consists of her mate, Calef, their three pups Rann, Sula, and Annie, and a seven-year-old wolf named Oldtooth. One morning Calef is killed by poachers, leaving Marta and Oldtooth to try to feed and raise the pups on their own. Though an experienced hunter, Oldtooth is unable to bring down large game as he lost most of his teeth chewing a steel leg trap off his leg years ago. Once the cubs are old enough to be left alone for short periods of time, Marta takes over the bulk of the hunting. Though it is difficult, the two adults successfully keep all three cubs alive and begin weaning them and teaching them the ways of the wolf. In the summer, traps begin appearing in the area as human populations increase. Annie and Sula are caught and are taken away by humans, but reappear a few days later, locked in cages. Marta tries to free her pups but is unsuccessful; however humans come regularly to keep them fed and ensure they have water. Oldtooth is later captured, while Marta is tranquilized from a helicopter. Rann escapes and is not seen again.
The wolves are kept in a human facility for a couple of months to be examined, and a wound on Oldtooth's paw is treated. In early winter, the wolves are sedated again and awaken to find themselves in a strange high place with radio collars around their necks. Still groggy from the tranquilizer, the strangeness of the events and the smell of grizzly bear
in the area triggers Marta's flight instincts and she runs blindly downward, leaving Oldtooth and the cubs behind. When Oldtooth awakens, he quietly abandons Annie and Sula, following Marta's trail, but at a much slower pace.
Marta continues running in the direction she believes will lead back to Pleasant Valley, swimming across Middle Fork River
, crossing the nearby highway and railroad tracks, and running through various woodlands in between. Pausing only to drink water and tend her paws, she crosses Pyramid Peak and swims across the Hungry Horse Reservoir, before a week without food and exhaustion cause her to collapse on the shore. After resting, she continues her run, though hunger now spurs her to pause to hunt when she can but she eventually collapses by Flathead Lake
, where she remains unconscious for days. Meanwhile, unskilled at hunting and without the adults to teach them how to survive, Annie and Sula slowly starve to death. Oldtooth reaches Middle Fork Valley, where illness and his lame foot drive him to hunt local livestock. He is shot and killed by a human.
When Marta recovers, her instincts to return home are dulled and she begins traveling more slowly. She makes her way through Swan Valley to cross the Swan Range
and Mission Mountains
. As winter settles in, she makes a winter home around Lindbergh Lake, where hunting is good and humans few. Near the end of winter, she meets another lone wolf, Greatfoot, a large male. Initially they maintain their distance from one another, until Greatfoot hunts the elk
herd in Marta's range, specifically the aging leader that Marta favored and refused to hunt herself. She stops the other wolf's hunt, and after a brief skirmish they forget the elk and become friendly. They form a pack of two and leave the area, heading south. After mating, their travels become more urgent to find a home to raise young.
They settle in Ninemile Valley, a large forested region that while inhabited by humans, has few roads and homes. Several weeks after they make their den, Marta gives birth to seven pups, though one dies shortly after birth. As spring arrives, the pups grow well under their parents care and begin making their first explorations outside of the den. In early summer, Marta leaves the den to hunt and is killed by a poacher. Greatfoot is left as the sole provider for the pups. Though they were not fully weaned, they soon learn to eat the meat their father provides and he slowly begins teaching them how to avoid humans and how to survive. The only human the pack ignores is a human scent they frequently find on their trails, as no human ever appears with it, only the occasional sound of a truck nearby.
Near the end of summer, Greatfoot is run over and killed while crossing a freeway during a hunt. The pups begin hearing a strange wolf howl, but when they track it they find a fresh kill and the familiar human scent. New kills appear every few days as the young wolves grow larger and stronger. One night when they hear the unusual howl, they are closer than usual to it and reach the kill in time to meet their benefactor, a human male. The pack stares at the man, before disappearing back into the forest, ignoring his howl. As he goes to leave, however, the six return to the edge of the clearing and howl.
teacher at Flathead High School
in northwest Montana and a former op-ed
columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, she stated that she read news reports about the Pleasant Valley wolf pack in the Daily Inter Lake, but it was the death of one of the Ninemile pups that spurred her to write the novel. In her words, it was "one death too many" from the many non-accidental deaths of the wolves, and she felt the "story needed to be told". She spent four years studying wolves in preparation for writing the novel, particularly the lives of a pack of wolves that were part of the federal wolf relocation
program and who were documented in records kept by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
. The pack formed in the spring of 1989 in Pleasant Valley, Montana. As in the novel, the alpha male was killed, mistaken for a dog by a rancher, and the rest of the pack was trapped, except the one pup that escaped. They were held in Kalispell
until they could be transferred to Glacier Park. Using radio collars, biologists were able to track the pack members from their release to their eventual fates, as depicted in the novel. The pups born to Marta and Greatfoot were born in Spring 1990 in Ninemile Valley, an area near Missoula
. When they stopped receiving a signal for Marta, authorities searched for her body for weeks until her broken radio collar was found in a creek. Mike Jimenez, then a wildlife biologist and the Wyoming Wolf Recovery Project Leader, was the man in the blue truck who tracked and monitored the pack in the novel and fed the pups after the death of Greatfoot.
The novel, then titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, was first published by Simon & Schuster in hardback format on January 13, 1997. The first edition included ink illustrations by Jane Hart Meyer. The novel was reprinted in paperback
format on January 30, 1998. The novel later went out of print, after enjoying modest success in the Netherlands
. A few years later, Bowen's attorney convinced her to rework the novel for young-adult readers, and on December 27, 2005, Bloomsbury USA reprinted the edited novel with the new title of Wolf: The Journey Home in hardback format, without the illustrations of the previous edition and with a new photographic cover. The new edition of the novel has been translated and reprinted in China.
that same year. Though the pups learned to hunt, Silver and Pikuni left the pack and the other four began killing livestock. They were captured to be relocated, much as their parents had been. One, Camas, escaped after waking up from the tranquilizer early. Chinook was killed for continuing to hunt livestock and Timber was killed by a poacher. Tenino, who also continued hunting livestock, was recaptured and sent to Wolf Haven International
, a sanctuary in Washington State, where he lived until his death in 2001. The fates of the other cubs, as well as Rann, the cub who escaped the initial relocation, are unknown. In the epilogue of the novel, Bowen expresses hope that they survived and bred, enabling the bloodlines started with Marta and Greatfoot to continue in the wolf packs that now inhabit the area. Jimenez continued working as the Wyoming Wolf Recovery Project Leader for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service until 2008, when he was selected to be the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Wolf Program Coordinator.
. Publishers Weekly
s Sybil Steinberg called it a "powerful first novel" and a "genuinely eye-opening tale". She praised Bowen for "striving to inhabit the wild psyche of Marta with a minimum of anthropomorphic sentimentality," and felt the author conveyed "both a reverence for the ways of the wild and a realistic grasp of wolves' fear of humans." Reviewing the title for The Detroit Free Press, Judy Rose considered it a "fact-and-fiction book" written "with a wolf's-eye view". She praised the work's factual basis and Bowen's extensive research into the topic, and felt the novel's release was "well-timed", coinciding with growing interest in wolf research and the reintroduction programs, particularly those at Yellowstone Park. While noting the novel is not for everyone, she felt it would be enjoyable to "wildlife lovers" and that readers will "howl with [the wolves] pain". David Seideman of the Chicago Tribune
considered the novel to be in the same "vein [as] the classic The Incredible Journey
", praising the author's "faithfully [capturing of] their indomitable spirit". He thought that "Bowen's first-rate skills as a nature writer keep her from falling off the edge into anthropomorphism", though he criticized the scenes in which Marta refuses to hunt and even defends an old buck, feeling that she allowed "her sympathies to distort reality" and contradicted her own assertion that wolves are "always looking for an easy meal." Jennifer Henderson, of the Booklist
, found it to be a "memorable tale" that highlights the difficulties in reintroducing wolves even to protected areas. Calling it a "beautifully told wolf story" with a "tragic outcome", she recommended the novel for teenage readers who love animals. In Gentle Reads: Great Books to Warm Hearts and Lift Spirits, Deanna McDaniel recommends the novel in her list of 500 inspiring stories for young adults, considering it to be an engaging and "vivid" tale of survival that contains a "strong message of hope" in the legacy Marta leaves behind.
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
with line drawings by Jane Hart Meyer, it was retitled and reprinted without illustrations in 2006 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Based on true accounts of the Pleasant Valley, Montana, wolf pack, the novel traces the life of a female alpha wolf named Marta after the forced relocation of her pack in 1989 to an unfamiliar territory. Terrified, Marta abandons her pack and begins a journey in search of her home; she eventually arrives in Ninemile Valley, where she finds a new mate with whom she starts a new pack.
Bowen was prompted to write the story of the relocated wolves after becoming outraged over the continued poaching
Poaching
Poaching is the illegal taking of wild plants or animals contrary to local and international conservation and wildlife management laws. Violations of hunting laws and regulations are normally punishable by law and, collectively, such violations are known as poaching.It may be illegal and in...
of wolves in the protected areas of Ninemile Valley. She spent four years researching wolves while working on the novel. In recounting the fates of the animals at the end, she expresses hope in the ideals behind efforts to restore wolf populations. Nominated for a 2006 Teens' Top Ten award by the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
, the novel was praised by critics. Two praised Bowen's ability to avoid anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
while capturing the essence of wolf behavior and life. Another also praised the story's highlighting of the difficulties in wolf relocation
Wolf reintroduction
Wolf reintroduction involves the artificial reestablishment of a population of wolves in areas where they have been extirpated. Wolf reintroduction is only considered where large tracts of suitable wilderness still exist and where certain prey species are abundant enough to support a predetermined...
programs.
Plot
Marta, a black gray wolfGray Wolf
The gray wolf , also known as the wolf, is the largest extant wild member of the Canidae family...
, is alpha female in a small pack in Pleasant Valley, Montana, that consists of her mate, Calef, their three pups Rann, Sula, and Annie, and a seven-year-old wolf named Oldtooth. One morning Calef is killed by poachers, leaving Marta and Oldtooth to try to feed and raise the pups on their own. Though an experienced hunter, Oldtooth is unable to bring down large game as he lost most of his teeth chewing a steel leg trap off his leg years ago. Once the cubs are old enough to be left alone for short periods of time, Marta takes over the bulk of the hunting. Though it is difficult, the two adults successfully keep all three cubs alive and begin weaning them and teaching them the ways of the wolf. In the summer, traps begin appearing in the area as human populations increase. Annie and Sula are caught and are taken away by humans, but reappear a few days later, locked in cages. Marta tries to free her pups but is unsuccessful; however humans come regularly to keep them fed and ensure they have water. Oldtooth is later captured, while Marta is tranquilized from a helicopter. Rann escapes and is not seen again.
The wolves are kept in a human facility for a couple of months to be examined, and a wound on Oldtooth's paw is treated. In early winter, the wolves are sedated again and awaken to find themselves in a strange high place with radio collars around their necks. Still groggy from the tranquilizer, the strangeness of the events and the smell of grizzly bear
Grizzly Bear
The grizzly bear , also known as the silvertip bear, the grizzly, or the North American brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear that generally lives in the uplands of western North America...
in the area triggers Marta's flight instincts and she runs blindly downward, leaving Oldtooth and the cubs behind. When Oldtooth awakens, he quietly abandons Annie and Sula, following Marta's trail, but at a much slower pace.
Marta continues running in the direction she believes will lead back to Pleasant Valley, swimming across Middle Fork River
Middle Fork River
The Middle Fork River is a tributary of the Tygart Valley River in north-central West Virginia, USA. Via the Tygart Valley, Monongahela and Ohio rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area of on the easternmost part of the unglaciated portion of the Allegheny...
, crossing the nearby highway and railroad tracks, and running through various woodlands in between. Pausing only to drink water and tend her paws, she crosses Pyramid Peak and swims across the Hungry Horse Reservoir, before a week without food and exhaustion cause her to collapse on the shore. After resting, she continues her run, though hunger now spurs her to pause to hunt when she can but she eventually collapses by Flathead Lake
Flathead Lake
Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake in the western part of the contiguous United States. With a surface area of between and , it is slightly larger than Lake Tahoe. The lake is a remnant of the ancient inland sea, Lake Missoula of the era of the last interglacial. Flathead Lake...
, where she remains unconscious for days. Meanwhile, unskilled at hunting and without the adults to teach them how to survive, Annie and Sula slowly starve to death. Oldtooth reaches Middle Fork Valley, where illness and his lame foot drive him to hunt local livestock. He is shot and killed by a human.
When Marta recovers, her instincts to return home are dulled and she begins traveling more slowly. She makes her way through Swan Valley to cross the Swan Range
Swan Range
The Swan Range is a mountain range in western Montana in the United States . Its peaks typically rise to around . The range is bounded by the South Fork Flathead River to the east, the Flathead River to the north and northwest, the Swan River to the west, and lie to the southwest of Glacier...
and Mission Mountains
Mission Mountains
The Mission Mountains or Mission Range are a range of the Rocky Mountains located in northwestern Montana in the United States. They lie chiefly in Lake County and Missoula County and are south and east of Flathead Lake and west of the Swan Range...
. As winter settles in, she makes a winter home around Lindbergh Lake, where hunting is good and humans few. Near the end of winter, she meets another lone wolf, Greatfoot, a large male. Initially they maintain their distance from one another, until Greatfoot hunts the elk
Elk
The Elk is the large deer, also called Cervus canadensis or wapiti, of North America and eastern Asia.Elk may also refer to:Other antlered mammals:...
herd in Marta's range, specifically the aging leader that Marta favored and refused to hunt herself. She stops the other wolf's hunt, and after a brief skirmish they forget the elk and become friendly. They form a pack of two and leave the area, heading south. After mating, their travels become more urgent to find a home to raise young.
They settle in Ninemile Valley, a large forested region that while inhabited by humans, has few roads and homes. Several weeks after they make their den, Marta gives birth to seven pups, though one dies shortly after birth. As spring arrives, the pups grow well under their parents care and begin making their first explorations outside of the den. In early summer, Marta leaves the den to hunt and is killed by a poacher. Greatfoot is left as the sole provider for the pups. Though they were not fully weaned, they soon learn to eat the meat their father provides and he slowly begins teaching them how to avoid humans and how to survive. The only human the pack ignores is a human scent they frequently find on their trails, as no human ever appears with it, only the occasional sound of a truck nearby.
Near the end of summer, Greatfoot is run over and killed while crossing a freeway during a hunt. The pups begin hearing a strange wolf howl, but when they track it they find a fresh kill and the familiar human scent. New kills appear every few days as the young wolves grow larger and stronger. One night when they hear the unusual howl, they are closer than usual to it and reach the kill in time to meet their benefactor, a human male. The pack stares at the man, before disappearing back into the forest, ignoring his howl. As he goes to leave, however, the six return to the edge of the clearing and howl.
Development and publication
According to Bowen, she was "not a wolf person" before penning Wolf: The Journey Home. A language artsLanguage arts
Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages....
teacher at Flathead High School
Flathead High School
Flathead High School is an American public secondary school located in Kalispell, Montana. The school has been international baccalaureate certified since 2004. It is one of two high schools in School District #5...
in northwest Montana and a former op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
, she stated that she read news reports about the Pleasant Valley wolf pack in the Daily Inter Lake, but it was the death of one of the Ninemile pups that spurred her to write the novel. In her words, it was "one death too many" from the many non-accidental deaths of the wolves, and she felt the "story needed to be told". She spent four years studying wolves in preparation for writing the novel, particularly the lives of a pack of wolves that were part of the federal wolf relocation
Wolf reintroduction
Wolf reintroduction involves the artificial reestablishment of a population of wolves in areas where they have been extirpated. Wolf reintroduction is only considered where large tracts of suitable wilderness still exist and where certain prey species are abundant enough to support a predetermined...
program and who were documented in records kept by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats...
. The pack formed in the spring of 1989 in Pleasant Valley, Montana. As in the novel, the alpha male was killed, mistaken for a dog by a rancher, and the rest of the pack was trapped, except the one pup that escaped. They were held in Kalispell
Kalispell, Montana
Kalispell is a city in and the county seat of Flathead County, Montana, United States. The 2010 census put Kalispell's population at 19,927 up 5,704 over 2000. At 40.1% this is the largest percentage of growth of any incorporated city in Montana. Kalispell is the largest city and commercial center...
until they could be transferred to Glacier Park. Using radio collars, biologists were able to track the pack members from their release to their eventual fates, as depicted in the novel. The pups born to Marta and Greatfoot were born in Spring 1990 in Ninemile Valley, an area near Missoula
Missoula, Montana
Missoula is a city located in western Montana and is the county seat of Missoula County. The 2010 Census put the population of Missoula at 66,788 and the population of Missoula County at 109,299. Missoula is the principal city of the Missoula Metropolitan Area...
. When they stopped receiving a signal for Marta, authorities searched for her body for weeks until her broken radio collar was found in a creek. Mike Jimenez, then a wildlife biologist and the Wyoming Wolf Recovery Project Leader, was the man in the blue truck who tracked and monitored the pack in the novel and fed the pups after the death of Greatfoot.
The novel, then titled Hungry for Home: A Wolf Odyssey, was first published by Simon & Schuster in hardback format on January 13, 1997. The first edition included ink illustrations by Jane Hart Meyer. The novel was reprinted in paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
format on January 30, 1998. The novel later went out of print, after enjoying modest success in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. A few years later, Bowen's attorney convinced her to rework the novel for young-adult readers, and on December 27, 2005, Bloomsbury USA reprinted the edited novel with the new title of Wolf: The Journey Home in hardback format, without the illustrations of the previous edition and with a new photographic cover. The new edition of the novel has been translated and reprinted in China.
Aftermath
Jimenez stopped feeding the pups after ThanksgivingThanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
that same year. Though the pups learned to hunt, Silver and Pikuni left the pack and the other four began killing livestock. They were captured to be relocated, much as their parents had been. One, Camas, escaped after waking up from the tranquilizer early. Chinook was killed for continuing to hunt livestock and Timber was killed by a poacher. Tenino, who also continued hunting livestock, was recaptured and sent to Wolf Haven International
Wolf Haven International
Wolf Haven International, formerly known as Wolf Haven America and Wolf Haven Country, is a wildlife rehabilitation and management 501 non-profit organization headquartered in Tenino, Washington, that focuses on wolves...
, a sanctuary in Washington State, where he lived until his death in 2001. The fates of the other cubs, as well as Rann, the cub who escaped the initial relocation, are unknown. In the epilogue of the novel, Bowen expresses hope that they survived and bred, enabling the bloodlines started with Marta and Greatfoot to continue in the wolf packs that now inhabit the area. Jimenez continued working as the Wyoming Wolf Recovery Project Leader for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service until 2008, when he was selected to be the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Wolf Program Coordinator.
Reception
Wolf: The Journey Home was nominated for the 2006 Teens' Top Ten award by the American Library AssociationAmerican Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
. Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
s Sybil Steinberg called it a "powerful first novel" and a "genuinely eye-opening tale". She praised Bowen for "striving to inhabit the wild psyche of Marta with a minimum of anthropomorphic sentimentality," and felt the author conveyed "both a reverence for the ways of the wild and a realistic grasp of wolves' fear of humans." Reviewing the title for The Detroit Free Press, Judy Rose considered it a "fact-and-fiction book" written "with a wolf's-eye view". She praised the work's factual basis and Bowen's extensive research into the topic, and felt the novel's release was "well-timed", coinciding with growing interest in wolf research and the reintroduction programs, particularly those at Yellowstone Park. While noting the novel is not for everyone, she felt it would be enjoyable to "wildlife lovers" and that readers will "howl with [the wolves] pain". David Seideman of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
considered the novel to be in the same "vein [as] the classic The Incredible Journey
The Incredible Journey
The Incredible Journey, by British author Sheila Burnford, is a children's book first published by Hodder & they travel 300 miles through the Canadian wilderness searching for their beloved masters. It reveals the suffering and stress of an arduous journey, together with the unwavering loyalty and...
", praising the author's "faithfully [capturing of] their indomitable spirit". He thought that "Bowen's first-rate skills as a nature writer keep her from falling off the edge into anthropomorphism", though he criticized the scenes in which Marta refuses to hunt and even defends an old buck, feeling that she allowed "her sympathies to distort reality" and contradicted her own assertion that wolves are "always looking for an easy meal." Jennifer Henderson, of the Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
, found it to be a "memorable tale" that highlights the difficulties in reintroducing wolves even to protected areas. Calling it a "beautifully told wolf story" with a "tragic outcome", she recommended the novel for teenage readers who love animals. In Gentle Reads: Great Books to Warm Hearts and Lift Spirits, Deanna McDaniel recommends the novel in her list of 500 inspiring stories for young adults, considering it to be an engaging and "vivid" tale of survival that contains a "strong message of hope" in the legacy Marta leaves behind.