Once There Were Wolves

Saskia Maarleveld narrates this novel, a paean to the majesty of wolves. She convinces listeners that reintroducing wolves into remote forest environments is a positive step in restoring the balance of nature. Head biologist Inti Flynn is an Australian scientist who has touch synesthesia, a sensory disorder that causes her to literally feel whatever pain she witnesses. Maarleveld captures both her accent and the tension that lurks in her psyche. The 14 grey wolves released in the Scottish Highlands are the real stars of this drama. The humans-- including the heart-throb sheriff, a psychotic twin sister, and angry sheep farmers--are well depicted, but it is the wolves whose welfare becomes paramount to the listener. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Inti Flynn leads a team of biologists who have released 14 grey wolves into the remote Scottish Highlands as part of a rewilding project to help slow climate change. The team hopes to replicate the success of a similar project undertaken in Yellowstone National Park but the locals are opposed, worried the wolves will eat their livestock and destroy their way of life. Angry at the locals’ resistance, Inti struggles to settle into the area. She has her own demons to deal with, including caring for her twin sister, Aggie, scarred by an unnamed trauma that took place in their previous home in Alaska. As the wolves, against all odds, start to thrive in their new home, Inti lets down her guard and allows herself the possibility of love. But danger lurks: first stock, then a local farmer, are killed. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision that could jeopardise everything. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, who did? Inti knows the threat posed by wild wolves is nothing compared to the violence and cruelties humans can inflict on each other. This haunting and poetic novel highlights the intricate relationship between humans, animals and nature. It explores the trauma of violence and the power of hope. Part thriller, part redemptive love story, I couldn’t put it down.  Reviewed by Melinda Woledge

With her 2020 debut, Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy established herself as a powerful new voice in fiction. With her follow-up, Once There Were Wolves, the Australian author proves that her particular brand of deeply evocative literary lightning can indeed strike twice. Intense, emotional and rich with beautifully rendered prose, McConaghy’s novel is a powerful meditation on humanity, nature and the often frightening animalistic impulses lurking within us all. Inti Flynn and her sister, Aggie, were raised in two different households by two different parents who each had their own very specific reasons to distrust humanity. Inti turned to the wild for inspiration, comfort and fulfillment. Now grown and working in conservation, Inti arrives in Scotland to release the first gray wolves, absent from the region for centuries, back into the country’s Highlands. As local farmers respond with resistance and the wolves struggle to adjust to their new home, Inti finds herself caught between a sister who needs her, a man who wants her and a community that perhaps wants her gone for good, and that’s all before the dead body shows up. As McConaghy navigates Inti’s emotional state through past and present, from the wilds of Alaska to the town halls of Scotland, it becomes clear that Once There Were Wolves is as much concerned with charting Inti’s own wild nature as it is with the wild nature of the wolves she so loves. Whether McConaghy is writing about the deep, wordless connection between two sisters or the strange respect that forms between ideological enemies, her prose never feels overwhelmed or even particularly hurried. There’s a density of meaning to her language, filling every paragraph with poignant, poetic life, and it’s clear even in the opening chapters that she’s mastered this world and these characters. Once There Were Wolves is another triumph for a rising fiction star, offering an intensely realized world for readers to get lost in.

Like her hit 2020 debut, Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy’s second novel spirals into the recesses of the heart, exploring climate change and human behavior through the story of one woman’s fraught life. In Once There Were Wolves (8.5 hours), Inti keeps more company with animals than with people. Her work involves releasing wolves into the Scottish Highlands, a controversial venture that arouses suspicion—and then violence—from farmers. The wolves’ presence will allow forests to regrow by forcing deer to keep moving, but the local villagers can’t see beyond the threat to their lives and livestock. Having grown up between a hardline, back-to-the-land father and a mother whose professional expertise is in domestic abuse, Inti’s nurtured cynicism competes with the kindness and goodness she experiences from her sister and a handful of other close relationships. In the audiobook, master voice actor Saskia Maarleveld keeps the book’s intrigue high. Her breathless delivery captures Inti’s sensitivity and other characters’ misgivings of one another, heightening the tension between domesticity and wildness. Maarleveld also drives home the book’s global expanse through a medley of expert accents, including Canadian, Australian and Scottish. ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of the print edition of 'Once There Were Wolves'.