Ross, is convinced her son is not Jammet’s killer. Is Francis the murderer or was it someone from the Company who couldn’t stomach Jammet’s increasing affiliation with its new rival?įrancis’ mother, Mrs. It is now up to the townspeople to find out if the two incidents are related in some way. What’s worse, the townspeople soon realize that a local kid, 17-year-old Francis Ross has disappeared too. He has been scalped and there are two sets of tracks leading from his cabin through the snow.

It is against this background that in the town of Caulfield, an outsider, French-speaking Laurent Jammet is found dead in his cabin. The problem is, as in any thriving capitalist economy, there is competition brewing in the form of an up-and-coming trading company called the North America Company and that creates quite a bit of resentment and worry among the Company members. The trade is managed by the Hudson Bay Company known simply as the “Company” and its outposts, all “stripping the land of its wealth, scattering crumbs in return.” Local trappers sell precious furs (the silver fox is particularly valued) to the Company and business is good for the most part. At the time there is vibrant business being conducted by the mother country, England, for most of the countryside’s natural resources.

When the novel opens, it is 1867 when the town is still young and its habitants a mix of Scots and Yankees, grind along and make a life for themselves in the harsh snowy landscape. Caulfield by Dove River, was settled in 1860. In her fairly assured debut The Tenderness of Wolves, Scottish author Stef Penney conjures up a town in Canada more than a hundred years ago. (Reviewed by Poornima Apte JULY 10, 2007)

The tenderness of wolves by stef penney