St
. Martin’s
Published April 7, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
A wolver, according to dictionaries, has two meanings: a person who hunts wolves, and a person who behaves like a wolf. The four main characters in this novel include three wolvers who meet both definitions and One-Eleven – a wolf.
Trace Temple is hunting One-Eleven in the Gila Wilderness as the novel opens, hired by a shady, secretive militia opposed to the reintroduction of the species. Trace is broke and angry at the government after losing his family ranch, reduced to living in his truck. He’s a gifted hunter, familiar with the back country and a crack shot, but the wolf who leads the pack is wily and skilled. So is a mysterious figure who is on the alpha wolf’s side. It’s only after he nearly dies, dragging himself painfully out of a canyon with a bear trap anchored in his ankle, that Trace decides to forgo the money, wanting the wolf and her cubs to survive.
But the militia wants One-Eleven killed, and soon another hunter is prowling the wilderness, seeking both the wolf and the men who want to save her. Murdoch is both skilled and ruthless, determined to take out the wolf and anyone who stands in his way. We see the action from all of their perspectives, including that of the wolf who is a match for the wolvers. Her perspective is gripping without being anthropomorphic.
It’s not quite correct to say there are four characters. The Gila Wilderness is a fifth, vividly described in all its rugged, dangerous beauty. While the story is a propulsive one of hunting and survival, the language the author uses is as compelling. A reclusive mountain man, sitting in a cave high on a canyon wall beside a fire sees pictographs there that “flared and moved on the tanned musculature of the stone, as if scratched in flesh.” When Trace hears a wolf howl it’s “a voice hurled long and wailsome across the plain like the keening of some prehistoric ghost.” And when he’s injured and trying to drag himself to safety, he has his own elemental moment. “Something came roaring from his chest. He threw back his head and his throat convulsed, launching some deep part of himself into the sky. High and wild and lonesome.” His howl is answered by another, echoing his own. The hunter of wolves has become wolf-like.
There is a rudimentary political plotline, here, with a wealthy group of men dreaming of secession, seeing the reintroduction of wolves as overreach by a despised federal government, but it’s intentionally dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape where men and wolves fight for survival. This is not a flaw; it’s where the story is focused, on the drama playing out among men and a she-wolf leading her pack. It’s an extraordinary thriller that deploys language so skillfully it doesn’t slow the action, but is every bit as exciting.