Like watching Planet Earth in your mind’s eye, American Wolf, is an adventure that lets you experience moments on Earth that most people haven’t even dreamed exist. Author Nate Blakeslee tells the story of O-Six, one of the most famous Yellowstone wolves. O-Six was shot by a hunter during a brief period in which wolves were removed from the endangered species list. Blakeslee tells O-Six’s story through a variety of lenses covering issues of politics, environmentalism, and humanity.

Told in a very Eric Larson style narration, American Wolf is a literary, non-fiction work that covers fact with the guise of fiction. Blakeslee’s sources include everything from interviews to field notes, and his method for compiling these facts build beautifully into a narrative form that tells more like a story than an account of history. Part of what adds to the literary element of American Wolf is the multiple points of view that Blakeslee takes up throughout his telling.

O-Six is only one of many characters who makes an appearance in American Wolf. Others include O-Six’s murderer, alias Steven Turnball; wolf expert Rick McIntyre; the wolves of O-Six’s pack and those of rivalry tribes; as well as senators, governors, and even Barack Obama. Blakeslee’s drama weaves between wolves hunting food, humans hunting wolves, humans fighting humans, and wolves fighting wolves all the while allowing readers to see all sides, even if one side is clearly preferred.

While Blakeslee advocates strongly for the wolves in American Wolf, he does not do so at the expense of the other players on the field. He very pointedly captures the arguments from all sides: arguments about the controversial reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone in the early 1990’s and the debates around when and if to remove the wolf from the engendered species list and thereby open the wolf to being hunted. We hear from ranchers, from hunters, from environmentalist, and politicians, seeing the intricacies of what one act can do to a person, a town, a country.

Blakeslee does a fantastic job of capturing the unique and desolate beauty of Yellowstone from the point of view of a creature few who’ve travelled to Yellowstone have even seen. Barreling through trees, battling against bears, fighting for survival, Blakeslee makes his readers feel like they are there, swooping through the forests and plains of Yellowstone beside the wolves. And when you aren’t in the park, the battles are just as heated in civilization.

A beautiful, moving, and essential piece of literature during a politically heated time, American Wolf was published in 2017 by Crown Publishing. You can purchase a copy of American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee at your local bookstore.

Read more nonfiction book reviews at Centered on Books.

FTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.