Holiday Romance Book

In 2016 I read a book called Wolf Totem. Jack London's story Love Of Life was mentioned there, and at the time I put the title on my Told You So list, where I keep track of interesting books mentioned in other books. I was curious about why young people in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia would have been reading that particular story.

This year one of my reading goals is to make a few dents in some of my personal lists, so here we are. I had found Love Of Life at Project Gutenberg as part of a collection of eight London stories. Of course I had to read them all....I mean, it's Jack London!

So why had those young people in wolf Totem read the story Love Of Life? It tells what happened to a man (we never learn his name) when he sprains his ankle on a trek to get out of the north country before the winter. His partner Bill never looks back, never answers the man's calls, he just keeps on walking. And we face a cold, hungry hell with the man while he tries to save himself. Then the wolf shows up, and what happens between him and the man made me understand the power this story had for the readers in Wolf Totem.

Some stories are written from a Native American viewpoint, others show the White Man's approach. All the stories are amazing and well worth the time. Negore, The Coward is particularly moving; The Unexpected features a woman who is stronger than the men around her when she needs to be; The Story Of Keesh reveals life-giving ingenuity on the part of a young orphan boy; and The Sun-Dog Trail will leave a reader wondering along with the narrator, who never did learn the 'Why?' of his experience with two young people who nearly killed all three in their search for....what?

Each story here is set in Alaska (Brown Wolf is the one exception, it takes place in California, but Alaska is the gorilla in the room there) and all are intense views of life in the gold rush days and earlier. No one writes this type of story the way London did. Have blankets ready, you will feel the seventy-below-zero cold. Have munchies handy, you will think you are dying of hunger. Get up and walk around every few minutes while you read, because you will be convinced that if you don't keep moving, you will freeze.