Ordinary Wolves
“I’ve not read anything that so captures the contrast between the wild world and our ravaging consumer culture. Ordinary Wolves is painful and beautiful.”—LOUISE ERDRICH
Born and raised in the Arctic, Cutuk Hawcley has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. And yet in spite of his respect for the indigenous hunters who have taught him how to survive, he is jeered and pummeled by Inupiaq children. When he leaves for the city as a young man, incompatible realities collide, forcing Cutuk to choose between two worlds, both seemingly bent on rejecting him.
Acclaimed as “the first contemporary Alaska novel that seems true, the first one that matters” (Nick Jans), “a magnificently realized story” (New York Times), and “a rare thing of beauty” (Los Angeles Times), Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what most of us have known: inhuman cold, the taste of rancid salmon shared with shivering sled dogs, hunkering in a sod igloo while blizzards moan overhead.
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Seth Kantner
Born and raised in the wilderness of northern Alaska, Seth Kantner is the author of Ordinary Wolves and Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska. Kantner has worked as a trapper, fisherman, gardener, mechanic, wildlife photographer, and adjunct professor.
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