American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

While Blakeslee illustrates the wolves’ social lives via family scenes, he does not shy away from showing them at their wildest. We get numerous scenes of the wolves hunting; in fact, the book opens with one, as O-Six and her temporary cohorts pull down an elk in front of Rick. Even here, it is O-Six who deals the death blow, and for all Laurie worries about wolves being portrayed as simply “killing machines” (141), there is clearly a reverence among the watchers who see these moments play out. Blakeslee includes these moments not simply to show the wolves’ day-to-day struggle but also highlight O-Six’s skills in particular. She is an impressive, competent hunter, and by showing how she masters her environment, Blakeslee heightens the pathos of her death by humans, the only enemy who can best her.

The first episode of this motif pops up on Page 30, when Blakeslee recounts the grizzly death of the injured Druids alpha, 38. He notes that the killer was never found, though most came to suspect a local hunter. Elsewhere, too, Blakeslee mentions a local omertà, or code of silence, on illicit wolf-killings, evident in paltry fines and lax efforts to enforce proper culling methods. This paints a picture of authorities who are, at best, indifferent to the fate of wolves—or at worst, actively encouraging their destruction, perhaps due to the wolf’s poor cultural representation throughout history.

One of the most humanizing motifs that appears throughout the book is the Lamar adults tending to or playing with their pups. The first litter in particular leads Blakeslee to use some of his most anthropomorphic language, describing 755 as “an attentive father” (94) or “affectionate.” Later litters draw crowds of spotters, and while the sight of the pups should be a moment of joy, it is gradually overshadowed by more and more menace, as each new year the political situation worsens for the Lamars and other wolves.