Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Wolf’s View Of The World Is Touching

Judy Rose Detroit Free Press

“Hungry For Home: A Wolf Odyssey” by Asta Bowen (Simon & Schuster, $21)

Marta was a gray wolf in the northern Rockies - an alpha, or leader, female. Caleb was her first mate, the alpha male. Oldtooth was a damaged older wolf who helped Marta feed her den of three pups after Caleb was shot by a rancher.

All three, as well as Marta’s second mate, Greatfoot, were real wolves who lived, hunted and raised two litters of pups in the northern Rockies.

The key events of their lives are known because they were part of the federal wolf recovery project, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Marta, Oldfoot and all Marta’s pups had been fitted with radio collars.

“Hungry For Home: A Wolf Odyssey” (Simon & Schuster, $21) is a fact-and-fiction book that fills out the story of their lives with personal details of the way they lived.

Asta Bowen, who lives in the Rockies and studies wolves up close, writes with a wolf’s-eye view - as if she were Marta.

There’s enough drama in the wolves’ real lives to break your heart as the small pack is ravaged by bears, starvation, hunters and cars.

Eventually only Greatfoot, Marta’s second mate, is alive, trying to care for the den of six pups left when a poacher shoots Marta.

But then Greatfoot dies too, killed by a car.

At this point a wildlife biologist steps in. It’s he who has been tracking the wolves from afar - and whose records form the bones of this book. With imitation wolf calls, he summons Marta and Greatfoot’s pups to a spot where he leaves carcasses of road-killed deer.

This is an adult animal story well-timed to today’s new public interest in studying wolves and in reintroducing them to areas such as Yellowstone Park.

It won’t be for everyone, but wildlife lovers will enjoy Bowen’s den’s-eye view of a wolf’s world.