KDL Recommends

Ordinary Wolves: A Novel

ISBN: 1571310444

Title: Ordinary Wolves: A Novel

Author: Seth Kantner

KDL Description:

A white boy transplanted from Chicago to the Arctic tundra of Alaska finds himself struggling to adapt to his new home, where he must learn to hunt, fish, and live off the land, separated from the constant call of consumer culture.

Amazon Description:

A stirring and vivid novel about a white boy raised among natives on the harsh Alaskan tundra, Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what most people have ever known. In its pages, Cutuk, a boy equally uncomfortable in the ways of whites and Inupiaq, tells of his youth and young adulthood: of his father, who brought his family to Alaska from Chicago before Cutuk’s birth; of his adopted Inupiaq family; and of the vast Arctic expanse beneath the frozen sky. It is here that Cutuk grows up — hunting, fishing, and living off the land, far away from the grinding, yet beckoning, machine of consumer culture.

Dispelling all mythical visions of Alaska, this evocative novel leads readers down its true trails, to feel the icy pinch of cold, to hunker as blizzards moan overhead. And in the twilit spaces from which animals appear are the wolves — and Cutuk’s father — living their lives out on the tundra, unobtrusive, unapologetic, uninvolved in the world beyond.