WILD VOICES

Seven bleak, realistic stories about animals coexisting and competing on a western farm and in the nearby wilderness. Perhaps the most appealing concerns a vixen that manages to survive after outwitting a dog, though she loses her den. In others, a lynx dies in a cruel trap; a hungry puma is shot while on an overbold hunt in the farmyard; a stallion successfully defends his herd against a wolf pack but—in another story—the aging lead wolf is forced out of the pack by a challenger; a wild goat leads her kid to safety over treacherous ground; and a faithful dog who has outlived her usefulness is put out of her misery by a businesslike yet compassionate master. The tone is stark— occasionally overdramatic but unsentimentalized and mostly true to reality, with typical natural events providing the tension in the tradition of Ernest Thompson Seton (but without the gentleness that mellowed his stories). A vivid, sobering glimpse of the rigors of the animal world. Schoenherr provides handsome drawings as headings for each story. (Short stories. 10-14)