Book Summary and Reviews of Wolf, Moon, Dog by Thomas Wharton

Book Summary

An imaginative and inventive novel about the many fabled lives of a dog named Wolf—hunter, guardian, guide, healer, friend.

In a hard and hungry season thousands of years ago, a young wolf is turfed out of his pack and left to fend for himself among strange, clever new animals who walk on two legs, hunt with detachable claws and teeth, eat meat but wastefully discard the bones, and tend fire as part of their pack.

Eventually, one of these young animals carefully approaches Wolf. He explains that he's a human, and that his kind and Wolf's kind aren't so different: they hunt the same prey, they're hunted by the same predators and they need help surviving. The boy proposes a deal: Wolf will stand watch at night and alert the humans if danger approaches, and in exchange the humans will reward him with one meaty bone a day. Wolf agrees to the arrangement on a trial basis and over time grows closer to the boy, giving into an inexplicable urge to seek companionship with humans. And so, Wolf becomes dog.

In Wolf, Moon, Dog, award-winning author Thomas Wharton follows Wolf as he reincarnates through the ages, from Ancient Egypt to Alexandrian Greece to the Cold War, all the way to a dark future beset by climate change. Indeed, Wolf dies many times over, but each of his lives is uniquely meaningful, unleashing different aspects of humankind's best friend. In Wharton's modern parable, dogs are deeply empathetic creatures who experience a breadth of emotions and a desire for self-determination much the way we do, and who, also like us, struggle to reconcile conflicting instincts.

Dancing across genres and cultures, space and time, Wolf, Moon, Dog is as insightful about human nature as it is about canine behaviour. In the tradition of Laline Paull's The Bees or David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtell, Thomas Wharton's Wolf, Moon, Dog is a magical and inventive tour de force.