The Canadian settlement of Dove River is remote but it is not so isolated that the people living there don't abide by established rules of society. There may be fewer prejudices than typical of the big cities but everyone still knows their places and what their neighbors expect of them -for good or for bad. In November of 1867 Laurent Jammet is murdered and everything the Dove River inhabitants thought they knew -about themselves and each other- is turned upside down. The sensational nature of Jammet's death draws a wide cross-section of people, from those seeking the truth to those seeking personal or professional glory. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has wants and needs. Not everyone gets the ending they deserve. The Tenderness of Wolves will have readers thinking; is it the journey or is it the destination that makes it all worthwhile?
There are numerous characters who all have a small part to play in the bigger picture, just like real life. Even the characters who don't have a direct connection to the murdered man are effected, like the ripple effect in a pond. A tragic part of the aftermath becomes the secondary killings that are committed to cover-up the original crime. This book requires the type of words that don't hold back, like: bleak, gritty, harsh, brutal, honest, uncomfortable, and unforgiving. If you want a book to take you to another time and place, if you want a book that will require your full attention, or if you want a book that will leave you feeling disquieted, THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES should be the next one you read. There is no epilogue or neat summation of what happened after, so the reader can imagine their own dramatic continuation. Not an easy book -but worth the effort- there is no mystery as to why it was chosen as the "First Novel Award winner" and then was chosen as the 2006 "Costa Book of the Year."
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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