Peter and the Wolves - Lupine Lives Matter in Heller’s Latest Thriller.
Writer Peter Heller, the hottest thing going at present after the release of The Last Ranger, following his masterpiece The River in 2019 and follow-up The Guide in 2021, once spent about six weeks on a black-metal-arms pirate boat known as the Farley Mowat, chasing the Japanese whaling fleet around the South Pole intent on sinking it.
The Farley, named after the Canadian author who gave us north of the border adventures such as Never Cry Wolf, and (my childhood favorite) Lost in the Barrens, was captained by Paul Watson, an eco-vigilante who once (among other monkey wrenching escapades) sank a couple of Norwegian whaling ships in a Reykjavik, Iceland harbor, but somehow never had to really answer for it. It is telling that despite being one of Greenpeace’s founding fathers, Watson got kicked out for being too radical.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/05/neptunes-navy
The outlaw Japanese whalers claimed to be doing “research”. Watson didn’t really believe that.
Heller, who was the lucky journalist on board the Farley, found out a little late that Watson and his first-mate wife had stashed a high-powered rifle on board, as a back up to a huge steel pike mounted to the Farley’s bow—designed to poke a workable hole in the Japanese ships.
Heller was NOT happy. “Your honor: Maritime law on aiding and abetting piracy and murder applies here.”
He made it safely back to port and wrote a book called The Whale Warriors (2007) about this adventure, back when he was writing immersion non-fiction. But in 2012, after a few of those books (see also, Hell or High Water, which is about kayaking/surviving a river in Tibet called the Tsangpo, which is…not really kayak-able) he wrote The Dog Stars—a poetic post-apocalyptic debut thriller with a debt to Cormac McCarthy (The Road), and I suppose, Denzel Washington’s The Book of Eli and even Mel Gibson’s Road Warrior.
With The River, The Guide, and now The Last Ranger—he’s found his stride, and his place in the literary world, writing nuanced and textured fiction and now probably making some money doing it.
Ren Hopper, “the last ranger”, is sort of a more cultured version of the CJ Box protagonist, Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett. He can work a fly rod, carries a gun, and drinks a lot of coffee while driving around enforcing fish and game laws in Yellowstone National Park. But he has worked in an art gallery and has an appreciation for great painters. He’s an aspiring writer.
As info, Heller’s protagonists usually have a fondness for obscure painters, centuries-old Chinese poetry, and/or great literary works. They also fish, hunt, carry guns, ranch, ride, chew Skol or Copenhagen…you get the idea. Gritty, bad-ass renaissance men who kick the mud and sawdust off of their shoes as they enter a frontier coffee shop that might be called something like “Western Grounds” and order a regular black coffee instead of a flat white.
Hopper also carries around sadness and resentment stemming mostly from his complicated relationship with his mother, and from the untimely death of his wife. Whom he first met in the art gallery. So Ren is angry. Which is not good news for a local poacher, Les Ingraham, who seems bent on taking out the wolves of Yellowstone, the wolves Ren’s best friend, wildlife biologist Hilly, studies and loves.
Hilly values wolves more than she does people. She grew up in Minnesota, deer hunting with her father, and can handle a weapon. Also not good news for the poacher—especially after Hilly gets caught in trap, set conveniently near her wolf-watching nest. Ingraham is a local football legend who was once regarded as a hero, now embittered by a career-ending injury, and he’s a dude to avoid. He’s the main character from the Hank Williams, Jr. song, A Country Boy Can Survive. He is what Vikes TE TJ Hockenson looks like.
It seems like TJ is pretty chill though. Although based on his feeble attempt at the first pitch that I saw at Target Field a few weeks ago, he for sure needs to stick to football.
There are some hairy and sometimes humorous scenes in this book as Ren deals with city folk, creating miles-long backups in the Park to look at bears and bison—or, hitting the bison while having a blood alcohol level of .20. He has to rescue a little girl from a cow moose that is about to dismantle her and her parents as they try a selfie from a few feet away. At one point he is called to a scene involving a fight over a camping spot where a young trust-fund, earthy-crunchy woman aims a cross bow at him—while her boyfriend is in a Mexican standoff with a family from Minnesota.
There also is a side story involving a wayward young man from Ren’s law enforcement past, who has found brotherhood and kinship in a MAGA-friendly group called the Pathfinders whose agenda could best be described as “anti-tree hugger”, and anti-government. The ideological battle lines around wild spaces vs. the human pox are drawn frequently in this story, and the seemingly timeless battle between wolves and men is where Heller augers down the deepest.
To his credit, he’s done his homework. Hilly gives us a full breakdown on an eco-theory that ties Yellowstone wolf reintroduction and population health right down to sediment, stream buffer zones and trout. She’s a great character, just as rooted in her beliefs as the men at the Pathfinder board meetings. She maps wolf pack genograms. She psychoanalyzes alphas. She catches herself up short, thinking of the Park wolves as almost human, and as her family.
What puts Heller in a different category from Box, and some others who write thrillers, is his exploration of his main characters’ deeper thoughts and emotions, past trauma, and inner struggles. Ren has to calm himself constantly as he becomes impatient with just about everyone around him, modulating his frustrations.
It’s not stated, but Heller knows, and we know, that Ren sees himself in Ingraham, and in the young Pathfinder with an axe to grind, and even in Hilly--Ren tends to favor wildlife over people as well. Heller’s characters in this novel, as in his others, are “both/and”, not “either/or”, as authentic reflections of the human condition—Ren is both sides of the coin. His job is to protect everyone, something he hasn’t been able to do for those closest to him. But his disdain for those he’s supposed to protect, as they bumble through his western paradise, sometimes is palpable.
There is a satisfying climax, and a bit of a love story. There is the beauty of Yellowstone, and a pretty interesting look at wolf biology. At the pace he’s going Heller may have another book out come spring—so I would recommend reading this one, when time allows.
Then read The River….and thank me later.
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