Badluck Way by Bryce Andrews

What a pleasure - this is not a critical review - I loved the book and the pace.  Since I love the area, love wolves and wildness, understand the conflict of ranching and have a horse (my wife's) at home - the last of a wonderful line of horses this is a novel that had to appeal to me.  Perhaps I should say as an old Hopalong Cassidy fanatic I love the open range stories.

But this is a book that does not mindlessly enter in to any of the typical genres.  It is a western in that it is in the west and on a cattle ranch - but that is it.  It is not a wildlife and wilderness book even though the second main character is a wolf pack. It is a story of a man yearning for the basics of life - ranch hand, but carrying the environmental and modern attitudes that make blasting away every wolf a burden on his conscience.  It is a contrast in sympathy for the dying cattle who, of course, are being raised to be killed, and sympathy for the wolf, who are in fact breeding to kill.

It is not always pretty.  The answers are not always easy.  That is the tension of the true novel and it works.  I can feel the saddle, I looked into the dark forest ravine with the author, I anguished at the elk caught in the barbed wire, and I could sense how difficult it can be to cross lines and be with others who have such clear-cut opinions and actions when you are conflicted.

The writing in excellent and the conclusions are not simplified and glazed over.  Even on a ranch with conservation as a high priority the decisions can be sad and even brutal.  The writing is excellent and the desire to keep reading is strong.