The Last Ranger
Book description
The best-selling author of The River returns with a vibrant, lyrical novel about an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Last Ranger as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Ranger lit is the best. (I spend half the year working as a seasonal in one of the last great wildernesses of the east.) And I tend to really like Peter Heller's stuff - The River ranks among the finest novels of the past decade - so I was predisposed to enjoy this title. It isn't his best work, but it's a very compelling read nonetheless, following enforcement ranger Ren Hooper around Yellowstone, seeing the park through his eyes. (As a park ranger, he rings true.) A good, page-turning tale of our uneasy relationship with wild places.
Another great Peter Heller book, with the author's trademark skills in creating a suspenseful, page-turning novel in a wilderness setting on full display. This one struck me as particularly good, in part because of the focus on Yellowstone's wolves. I actually learned a lot on that score, and it was heartening to see the complexity and profundity of a wilderness animal's existence so fairly and thoroughly drawn in the pages of a popular novel. I don't know any other writer who's done this so well, actually. And in terms of this novel's philosophical underpinning, its emotional charge, and its beautiful…