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The Tenderness of Wolves
Stef Penney
Simon & Schuster
July 2007
On Sale: July 10, 2007
384 pages
ISBN: 1416540741
EAN: 9781416540748
Hardcover
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Fiction | Historical
A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers
and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, The
Tenderness of Wolves was long-listed for the Orange Prize
in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly the
Whitbread) Book of the Year.
The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on
Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern
Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent
Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company
before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same
accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove
River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the
untimely death of the previous owner.
A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene
and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin
north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs.
Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield
that launches the investigation. Within hours she will
regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she
makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son
Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime
suspect.
In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the
crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's
elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American
itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company
representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native
American and trapper who was briefly detained for
Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But
the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime
or exploit it?
One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River
following the tracks across a desolate landscape-- home to
only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously
seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for
seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture
before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past
for good.
In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly
weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an
exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a
gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer
scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the
ages.
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