NONFICTION - July 19, 1992

THE NINEMILE WOLVES by Rick Bass (Clark City Press: $22.95; 165 pp.) Rick Bass writes in the appendix to this book, right after saying that wolves and men are brothers in the soul as well as in the hunt, that “You’ve come too far in this story to turn away now, when I start talking crazy like this. You can’t turn away. We have to follow.” In fact, of course, we don’t, and in “The Ninemile Wolves,” which traces the story of a Montana wolf pack, Bass gives us many reasons not to: his superior attitude, his routine romanticization of wolves, his failure to shape his notes into book form. A good idea lies at the heart of “The Ninemile Wolves”--What does the wolf’s return to the continental U.S. signify? Why does the animal evoke such strong reactions?--but Bass (perhaps best known for “Oil Notes”) doesn’t do his subject justice. Had he gone more deeply into the lives and interests of the wolves’ supporters--Mike Jimenez, a devoted Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist, or ranchers Ralph and Bruce Thisted, who loved watching the Ninemile pups grow up on their land--Bass might have created a book of lasting value, but this one simply makes the reader yearn for Barry Lopez or Edward Abbey.