A lupine love story

Comeback Wolves

Western Writers Welcome the Wolf Home

Edited by Gary Wockner, Gregory McNamee & SueEllen Campbell

Johnson Books: 224 pp., $15

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In June 2004, a gray wolf is found dead on I-70 in Colorado. She is “Wolf 293F,” a 2-year-old from a pack in the northwest corner of Wyoming.

She has traveled more than 500 miles in search of a mate and territory to form a new pack. Wolf 293 appears throughout this anthology heralding the reintroduction of wolves to Colorado and the Southwest.

Fifty western writers -- poets, anthropologists, ecologists, novelists, journalists and activists -- raise their voices in praise, protest and hope for the future of this magnificent, misunderstood, much-feared predator.

Seared with passion, beauty and prejudice, the book examines the historic and mythic complexity of wolves as their silent gray shadows begin once again to lope toward the lighted cities.

-- Susan Dworski