A lifetime dog-lover experiences the pleasures and pitfalls of domesticating a wolf-dog hybrid.
In order to claim her from a breeder, Terrill (Science Writing and Environmental Journalism/Concordia Univ.; Unnatural Landscapes: Tracking Invasive Species, 2007) frantically drove through the night to claim her newly born female “wolfdog” from a local breeder. “Inyo” became a welcomed distraction after narrowly escaping an abusive relationship. The breeder was quick to educate Terrill on owner-specific etiquette and common misperceptions of wolfdog ownership. However, as the author details in her richly descriptive narrative, upon moving to Reno, Nev., with financially challenged new husband Ryan, she learned these lessons personally after much time spent grappling with precocious Inyo’s unwieldy behavior and the intensive training and domestication rituals involved in establishing herself as the “alpha.” Terrill knows her territory extremely well (she’s formerly a Northern California Forest Service wilderness ranger), and she peppers the narrative with interesting knowledge about the nature of wolves, their interspecies behavioral traits, diet and the serious consequences challenging this type of unorthodox pet ownership. In the good-natured attempt at making Inyo suitable for human companionship, the author adopted two more dogs, and things worsened uncontrollably. Vicious, unprovoked attacks on neighborhood animals, coupled with evictions, irate neighbors and serious bodily injuries, finally necessitated drastic measures against a breed who “neither need nor want a bond with humans.” Complimenting each chapter—and, at times, surpassing the main narrative for its sheer factual noteworthiness—are the informational asides found in the author’s generous 18-page Notes section, which includes expanded research material on the Canis species, observations from other wolfdog owners and breeders and the statutory regulations concerning the care and protection of the breed. Readable, cautionary and dependably informative for staunch animal enthusiasts.
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3481-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
