Summer of the Wolves (review)

Nineteen months after twelve-year-old Nika and her younger brother, Randall, were orphaned by their mother's death, they are uprooted from their foster home and sent to stay with their father's estranged older brother, a wildlife biologist who is researching wolves on a remote lake island in northern Minnesota, until a more permanent situation can be worked out. On her first day accompanying Uncle Ian to work, the siblings find a dead female wolf and rescue her cub, to whom Nika forms an immediate attachment. As she helps raise the cub, she also begins secretly taking care of an adult wolf who's escaped the cruel cage of a nearby wolf hunter. Nika's losses and anxieties—the deeply felt instability of her life, her lack of control over her own future, her feelings of having no true place in the world—neatly parallel the wolves' situation, but Carson-Voiles never pushes the simile too hard, letting both stories unfold naturally in tandem. The wealth of information about wolf development and the rescue and care of wild creatures will appeal to budding naturalists, while the vivid, kid-accessible descriptions ("Nika hated people talking about what had happened to her family. It made her feel like a run-over animal lying in the street, everyone standing over her, looking down and discussing the nature of her injuries") pack a strong emotional punch. Nika's tenuous bonds to the wolves and to Ian are compassionately drawn, and readers will be aching for Nika to find her place to call home. Match this with Townsend's Sundown Rule (BCCB 3/11) for an exploration of the bittersweet healing power of connecting to nature.