THE FRIEND OF THE SINGING ONE

A Soggy survival story set in Alaska features a young singing wolf, Agorek, as chief companion, hunter-champion to a nine-year-old Eskimo boy. Together they hunt, fish and keep warm, save a baby caribou, face a polar bear, a wolf pack and a tribe of human strangers, escape a caribou migration stampede. Finally they stand irresolute as their families call them, mourning ""this never-to-be-forgotten summer."" The presence of the authors is pervasive: in the extended descriptive passages, in the sentimentalized relationship between boy and beast, in the often pretentious writing. Interesting details and earnestness fail to compensate.