The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Fiction
1867 Ontario, Canada. Mrs. Ross, who narrates parts of the book, finds the murdered body of a trapper in his cabin. Her teenage son Francis, who was friends with the dead trapper, has disappeared and is assumed by some to have been the killer. She decides to go searching for Francis with the help of half-Indian trapper William Parker. Of this 2006 Costa Book of the Year winner, Booklist writes the following: “This atmospheric, multilayered first novel is part murder mystery, part historical saga, and part meditation on civilization versus wilderness. The sparsely settled, frozen landscape is vividly evoked, and each stage of the pursuit takes the characters deeper into the wild and deeper into him-or her-self.”