American Wolf

In the 1920s, wolves had been hunted almost to extinction across the lower 48 states. Decades later, conservationists reintroduced them to the Rockies, and the return set off a fight over what the American West should be. Nate Blakeslee follows that fight through one animal: O-Six, a Yellowstone wolf named for the year she was born.

O-Six is a gray alpha female with faint black rings around her eyes, unusually strong, sharp in a fight, and by Blakeslee's account merciful toward rivals and devoted to her pups. Wolf watchers in the park come to know her well, among them the naturalist Rick McIntyre, who spends his days observing the packs. Her story reaches far beyond Yellowstone, and she gains followers around the world on social media.

Fame does not make her life any easier. Hunters compete with her pack for the elk both prize. Ranchers who are losing cattle have the attention of politicians. Rival wolves are also pressing to take over the Lamar Valley, one of the most beautiful stretches of the park. She has to raise her young and hold her pack together while all of this closes in.

Blakeslee tells it with the pacing and detail of a novel, but everything in it is true. It spans several generations of wolves and sets their struggles against a larger conflict between people who want to preserve a vanishing way of life and people who want to restore one of the country's most iconic landscapes.