By Nicholas Evans
ISBN: 0440224624
Binding: Mass-Market Paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
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Reviewed for Carbon County News by Gary Robson on 7/29/2002
In the fictitious town of Hope, Montana, people don't like wolves. When a ranching family has too close an encounter with a wolf pack, things get ugly. The protagonist, Helen Ross, is a biologist who comes to Hope to work on resolving the wolf problem, and finds herself caught in the middle of a battle.
The Loop, by Nicholas Evans (the author of "The Horse Whisperer"), has all of the components of a great novel. There's love, and of course it's not with the right person. Conflict between man and nature leads to conflict between people. There's suspense aplenty, and some rather twisted relationships. There's a harsh, overbearing antagonist, and a poor fellow working to overcome a handicap.
Your enjoyment of the book will be based at least in part on how you feel about wolves. If you love wolves and heartily support their reintroduction into Yellowstone, you'll be depressed by parts of this book, but you'll find yourself cheering in all the right places, and you'll really like Helen Ross.
If you're a cattle rancher, you'll find yourself resenting the book's treatment of all ranchers as cruel, heartless people who share a pathological hatred of wolves and want them hunted to extinction. Most of the ranchers in the book are portrayed as "bad guys," and the featured trapper is downright evil and sadistic--the name of the book comes from a device used to trap and kill wolf cubs.
Despite the negative stereotyping (yes, I have cattle, so I found it offensive), I found The Loop to be well-written and hard to put down. There's no question that Evans is a talented writer, and I understand why this book made the New York Times bestseller list.