A review by internationalkris
The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell

4.0

I have mixed feelings about The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell though it is certainly a terrific adventure story and will touch the heart of any animal lover. Young Feodora and her mother are "wolf wilders" which means that they help rehabilitate domesticated wolves and release them back into the forest. This job sets them outside of society and naturally there is a lot of superstition and fear surrounding their work. When they attract the negative attention of a general from St. Petersburg the two find themselves in a desperate situation which requires them to trust in others and seek out help as they have never done before. This author came to my attention with an earlier work Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms which is about a girl who grows up in Zimbabwe and then moves to England for boarding school; it was a terrific story and very connected to the author's own experience. Wolf Wilder however is set in tsarist Russia which is outside of the author's experience but very connected with the history that many of our families know. (I work at an international school in Moscow.) As I read the book I kept wondering which things were true and which were invented and what our readers would think of this romantic interpretation of their culture and history. It's a tricky thing to write as an outsider. A foreign setting can be very intriguing to many but what do the owners of that culture think? Looking forward to hearing from our constituents....