In the late 1800s, the semi-frozen Canadian territory north of Sault Ste. Marie is no place to go wandering around with winter coming on. Lakes and bogs are half frozen traps, snow storms obliterate trails and disorient travelers, and wolves are on the prowl. But after a Scottish pioneer woman finds her trapper neighbor murdered in his cabin and her teen age son goes missing, she and a hodgepodge of others set of in various groups to solve – or cover up – the mystery.

There are several possible motives for the murder, everyone is a suspect, and side stories interweave themselves into the main tale. But there are deeper levels to the book than simply solving a mystery. As the characters track each other through the cold, bleak landscape, they ultimately find their own life paths.

Stef Penney won the 2006 Costa Book of the Year Award for The Tenderness of Wolves. Part mystery, part adventure this is a smoothly written, complicated story that is sure to please readers looking for lots of plot but who want meat on the bones.

Also posted on Rose City Reader. ( )

Mrs. Ross finds the body of neighbor Laurent Jammet a former employee of the Hudson Bay Company in his cabin near the northern shore of Georgian Bay. When Mrs. Ross realizes that Jammet was murdered, she reports the incident to the highest law official in Caufield. On the night of Jammet’s death, her seventeen-year-old son Francis disappears and becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Convinced of her son’s innocence, Mrs. Ross begins a trek north with a mixed-blood Native American tracker to find Francis. Following her through the cold, desolate wilderness, two Hudson Bay officials and a famous tracker search for Francis Ross to find something they believe missing from Jammet’s cabin. Stef Penney’s debut novel is a cinematic, suspenseful novel with multiple, dimensional characters struggling to find the truth and survive the dangers of the vividly described Canadian wilderness. Alternating points of view weave together the storylines and plot twists. The Tenderness of Wolves is an exciting story about human passion and wilderness survival. ( )

Hi eembooks, Don’t know whether you’re still interested, but here's my take on your questions:
1. What caused Mrs. Ross to spend years in an asylum? pp. 73 "When I was a girl, while my parents still lived, I was troubled by what were termed "difficulties." I was seized with paralyzing fears that rendered me incapable of movement, even of speech...then he [her dad] too died, leaving me at the mercy of the unscrupulous superintendent, and I ended up in a public asylum,,,"
2. I would pay more attention to Half Man – he was ordered to commit the murder by Stewart because Stewart thought Laurent was going to steal the furs. ---I guess I agree; I'm not sure why HalfMan is such a mysterious character; probably worth a look
3. Elizabeth Bird is Eve Seton and married to Nepapanees is that all true? Yes
4. Amy Seton is never accounted for. True; I think she’ll come up in a later novel
5. Why did Stewart have Nepapanees killed or kill himself? To silence him and remove Stewart’s connection with Jammet’s murder
6. Why are the characters Line and Espen in this story? I think Penney has sown the seeds for a nice series, if she chooses to develop it. And Line and her lost husband, Janni, and Espen could appear in one of the later novels. On it’s own merit, though, Line, Janni, and Espen add complexity to the story (the rebellion where janni disappeared into the forest was related by another character—Sturrock?—so we see different aspects of the story through different eyes. I like this connectedness. And, as I say, it might be important in future stories.
7. Who is Kanon’wes? P. 133 He was a “young Indian militant journalist…succumbed to drink, drifted across the border.” Then he turned up in that bar that Maria visited, where she surprised him with her questions about Sturrock’s bone. He’s another rather mysterious character who might reappear in future novels.

I really liked this novel, especially the multiple narrators, although it was clear that Mrs. Ross was the main character. I also liked the different perspectives. For example, at first we were given to think of Sturrock as a trickster, heartless, taking advantage of Mr. Seton. But Sturrock’s thoughts, and his relating of the incidents looking for and finding Eve, showed us a completely different side of him, and different version of the events. And it wonderfully explained Knox’s acceptance and consideration of Sturrock, which, at the time, confused me. He knew that Sturrock had not deceived Seton, that Eve had actually been found, even though Seton kept silent about it. How hard that must have been for Sturrock, feeling compelled to keep silent himself while his professionalism was questioned and damaged unfairly.
An interesting mystery is Mrs. Ross’ first name. She tells Parker ”You have used it often enough.” What could that mean?
I also wonder how Mrs. Ross met and married her husband. P. 115 “My husband gave me something I never expected: a feeling of legitimacy….” But no mention of how she went from the asylum to being a wife in the wilderness.

Best regards,
Lane ( )

This book isn't about wolves; not literally, anyway. People, figuratively, are the wolves in this case. Definitely not what I was expecting, but I guess I liked it anyway. It's decent for being Penney's first novel. The ending was disappointing, and a LOT of ends were left untied. There were too many plot points to begin with, and there are at least four that were left hanging that could have been summed up with a short epilogue. The Tenderness of Wolves floats between suspense/detective/mystery and romance without actually falling into any one; in some cases that's a good thing, in this one it is not. 3/5 city people that shouldn't be writing about rural places that they've never been, no matter how much research they're doing in a library and how many pictures they look at. ( )

Wow. This story had me literally holding my breath and swallowing back fear. Stark imagery of snow covered plains provide a backdrop for the characters who traverse the wilderness of 1867 Hudson Bay in search of a murderer. Stef Penney is an absolute genius as every possible theme is deftly played out: man v. man, v. nature, v. himself. Cannot recommend highly enough. ( )

If you only read one book off my list, then its this one. Beautifully written.
For me, it was a love story so subtly written that its creeps up on you and only when the book ends do you see how gentle it is.
My book club have all read this, we are male and female and all of us saw something lovely about this book
READ READ READ! ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has a surreal, dream-like quality to it, that I think is due to the unusual way the story is narrated: by multiple characters (in both the third omniscient person and the first person) and in the present tense. The tale starts off as a 19th Century murder mystery, but it becomes so much more than that. By the end of the book it almost doesn't matter whodunnit! It's about the many characters and the way their difficult lives in the harsh Canadian winter intertwine and about their individual increases in self-awareness. There are some loose ends at the end, and a fair chunk of time is spent on characters who don't seem to have any place in the overall story, but this just makes it seem more real and believable. ( )

I really enjoyed this. It's a sort of crime story set in 1860s Canada, following the stories of a group of people linked together by a murder. There are lots of loose ends, but that worked for me here. The writing style really got across the atmosphere of the cold, isolated towns in which most of the story takes place. ( )

This story takes place in the isolated Canadian Northern Territory settlement of Dove River in the year 1867. The French fur trader, Laurent Jammett, is found brutally murdered in his bed, and the story unfolds with the search for his killer.

WHAT I LIKED: I really enjoyed the historical aspect of The Tenderness of Wolves and Penney's descriptions of the landscape are beautifully and realistically written. I felt the icy coldness and the isolation of the vast Northern Territory's winter environment.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Unfortunately, Penney's characters and plot were as flat and cold as the landscape. If I were to hear this book read aloud I wouldn't be surprised to hear a flat and monotone voice to suit the monotonous prose and emotionless characterizations.

The Tenderness of Wolves is highly rated by most people here on LT and it won the 2006 Costa Book of the Year, so obviously a lot of people liked it much better than I did. I guess it just wasn't my particular cup of tea. ( )

The Tenderness of Wolves, the Costa Winner by Stef Penney, was the story of murder and intrigue set against the beautiful but harsh Canadian landscape. Penney utilized the multi-narrator technique for her story, and her talent as a screenwriter showed through as she described every detail in the story.

In summary, The Tenderness of Wolves centered on the murder of Frenchmen, Laurence Jammet, whose body was found by Mrs. Ross, a Scottish wife and mother. As the murder was investigated, Mrs. Ross’s son, Francis, went missing suspiciously. Throw in some private investigators and treasure hunters, and you have a wild tale in the Canadian forest.

Overall, the characters were complex yet compelling. Because of the hopscotch narrative method, it was hard for me, though, to fully enjoy each character. I felt like I was introduced to two-thirds of each character – and never learned about the remaining third. This was especially true for Mrs. Ross, who had a difficult and interesting past. Through my reading, I wished Penney made Mrs. Ross the only narrator. In my opinion, it would have moved the story at a better pace.

While I was impressed with Penney’s sense of place and detail, I was underwhelmed by The Tenderness of Wolves. It had great potential, but the lack of character development and slow-moving plot burdened the story for me. ( )

Great location and timing potential abandoned to 'who cares' characters, snail's pace story development and tedious female perspective. A complete waste of time for me.
Having now read the reviews of others, who apparently generally thought the book was great, all I can add is that it is just as well that not everyone likes the same thing - I can see the craft of the author, but the application was turgid in the extreme. ( )

A panoramic epic, a magnificent piece of storytelling, an unforgettable debut novel

As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Canada’s Dove River in 1867, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year-old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin head north toward the forest and the tundra beyond.

In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township—journalists, Hudson Bay Company men, trappers, traders—but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen, and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two missing sisters, a forgotten Native culture, and a fortune in stolen furs.

In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humour into a gripping historical tale, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery, and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the best books of the year ( )

I'm not sure why; but an unusual style of writing. An interesting plot, with questions throughout about motives and what was going to happen. A good read. ( )

Complex, brutal, and enchanting. An excellent example of the power of the well-created character; not much needs to happen in order to make a page turner. “The Tenderness of Wolves” follows the discovery of a trapper murdered in his cabin in the far north of Canada, and the subsequent disappearance of Mrs. Ross (a neighbor of the trapper)’s son. As Mrs. Ross sets out to find her son and discover the truth of the brutal crime, we are treated to an amazing array of characters, stories, and places, and learn much about how things are not as they seem. ( )

This 2006 Costa award winner is pure pleasure from start to finish, if you enjoy a complicated plot and multifaceted characters. It is 1867 in the wilds of Canada as a bitter winter begins to settle in. Mrs. Ross, a Scottish immigrant with a difficult history, discovers that a neighbor has been brutally murdered. Even worse, her troubled seventeen-year-old son has disappeared, apparently following the trail of another man. Before the story is finished, more than fifteen characters will head out into the deadly winter landscape in pursuit of truth, justice, love, power or an elusive piece of valuable property. But there is much more to this book than its murder mystery premise or its dazzling descriptions of the Canadian landscape. The ensemble cast is beautifully rendered, their personal stories moving and complex, while each chapter introduces one more layer to its intricately woven, thoroughly exciting, plot. Unfortunately, the author has attempted more than she could fully realize in a novel of 371 page, so not every conflict is fully resolved, nor every detail adequately explained . Still, the book manages to offer outstanding entertainment and excellent writing – a fine novel in the classic tradition of storytelling. ( )

The Tenderness of Wolves is well written. The characters are well developed. The story ultimately pulls all its pieces together in a logically coherent way. But it’s not a fun spinning of the tale. Maybe it has too many pieces to just tell the story front to back. Maybe I just wasn’t feeling very sophisticated when I read it.

But probably the book isn’t about the story. It’s about a mother’s unconditional love. It’s about a confused teenager. It’s about a young man trying to prove himself in a new world. It’s about an older man trying to recapture lost honors. And it’s about a man trying to do what’s right, and to right past wrongs. There’s a good story in here, but Penney seems to have had a lot more important things to say.

My complete review is on my Blog, Nate's Library, specifically at: http://nates-library.blogspot.com/200... ( )

As with Diana Gabaldon's Culloden triptych, The Tenderness of Wolves is marred by a romantic lacey side that borders on tawdry. As with the comparison work, some readers may find the romance offputting yet love the hisorical fiction aspect. In any case, the plotting is taut and masterful, and the descriptive passages complement nicely the dialogue portions. A fine sense of the mystery of the woods is conveyed. --mm ( )

This is a well-written novel that opens with the discovery of Laurent Jammet's body and the disappearance of Francis Ross. As parties leave the trading post of Dove River for parts north, each member has his/her own agenda. This tale is told through the perspective of many narrators although the word "I" is generally associated only with Mrs. Ross, the mother of Francis. Coming of age issues such as sexuality are explored, not always with the culturally acceptable outcome. Other social issues such as alcoholism, infidelity, and domestic violence also make an appearance in this historical mystery set in the 1860s in northern Ontario. There is a lot of time for reflection during the course of the novel. The competitive nature of the fur trade business is shown by the way that one company tried to silence the competition, particularly when those who began the rival business were seen as "traitors." While the main mystery was resolved satsifactorily, I still had a lot of unanswered questions at the close of the novel. I don't know if the author will explore some of these questions in future sequels or not, but I would not mind revisiting Dove River and places north in the future. ( )

Warning: this review reveals the ending. And to be honest I would need to reread this book to understand more of meanings and nuances of this novel which won the Costa award in 2007. It is beautifully crafted writing that starts as an intriguing murder mystery; however it’s the development of the characters as they take on the arduous search through barren snow covered Canada looking for the murderer which becomes the real story. There is the stoic Mrs. Ross (we never do learn her first name yet most of the characters have a first names), Francis her adopted son, William Parker, and Donald. There a host of other characters who also weave in and out of the story. As the hunt for the villain continues we learn more and more of the main characters past. As a young girl Mrs. Ross lived in an asylum and was sexually abused by the superintendent but she never dwells on this tragic part of her life she moves on to try to understand her son, her feelings about a man she at first considers almost a savage.
Francis has been both sexually and emotionally abused by the murdered man but always considers that he truly loved the man who treated him so unkindly in many ways. Donald as “the company man” strives to be the upstanding law and order citizen, always follow the rules, to love the right and beautiful girl but in the end realizes her sister would have been the much more interesting and better companion. William Parker we get to know mostly from his gestures toward his dogs and people, his quietness and strength to search for the right answers. We can only guess what Parker would have really liked and we learn almost nothing about his past.
It is a story of the Indian culture, the difficulty for women to achieve an honored place in the world especially those who have no husband, a story of loss – girls who disappear, a bone tablet dropped in the snow a tablet which might have explained a lost Indian language and also a lost compass which could lead a woman and her two children to a new life. All these facts weave in and out of the fabric of the narrative. The book cover called this a serpentine novel and truly it is that.
The last section is called “The Sickness of Long Thinking” which is an apt description for ordeal of the end of the search and many of the issues which stay unresolved at the end of the novel Although the murderer is indentified we never see him nor really learn much about him and it is assumed he will die of his wounds somewhere in the wilderness. While on the one hand much seems unfinished at the characters have grown, perhaps only to consider a life that might have been.
What I would want to know if read this work again:
1. What caused Mrs. Ross to spend years in an asylum?
2. I would pay more attention to Half Man – he was ordered to commit the murder by Stewart because Stewart thought Laurent was going to steal the furs.
3. Elizabeth Bird is Eve Seton and married to Nepapanees is that all true?
4. Amy Seton is never accounted for.
5. Why did Stewart have Nepapanees killed or kill himself?
6. Why are the characters Line and Espen in this story.
7. Who is Kanon’wes?
If anyone reading this has suggestions about answers to these questions would love to hear what have say on these issues. ( )

picked this novel up off a table piled high over at the costco. as i am well aware, the origins of a book are not always indicative of their quality, in this case, i will say i was happily surprised.

set at the twilight of the 19th century in a remote Canadian village, the tale follows the murder mystery that unfolds in the tiny community. a local trapper is found dead and shockingly scalped and the village is rocked by the evidence of this violence in their midst.

perspective in this novel switches from first person in the entity of Mrs. Ross who discovers the body initially, to a third person voice following various other important players in the drama. the inner life of this trapper is inexorably revealed during the course of the investigation, and everyone in the community is touched in some way by his life or eventually, his death.

to my mind the most compelling character in the novel is our Mrs. Ross and feel the story suffers somewhat from leaving her behind. it seems, in what i interpret as an attempt to keep the book from being typified as a frontier murder mystery cum romance, the author might have sacrificed some measure of consistency. chapters which give us an eye into the minds of the other characters are interesting and absorbing to varying degrees, but the way we go from being inside Ross’ mind to merely observing these others seems a strange choice which interferes with the flow of the tale.

gripping vignettes describing the ruthless Canadian winter and the effect the elements have on the action makes the environment its own character. depictions of landscape and weather have a remarkable immediacy. language is used effectively and deftly throughout the novel.

some minor complaints about a tendency to stray and leave some points raised but answered persist, but since this is a first novel, i think on the whole, they are easily overlooked within the context of an otherwise starkly satisfying story.

recommended.
( )

I liked the pace of this novel -- a balance between activity and reflection. As I read it, a few linguistic anachronisms stood out, but in the end I don't think it matters. I don't believe this was meant to be first and foremost a historical novel.

The author's use of multiple narrators allows the reader to learn more than any single character in the book. The characters act based upon their individual perceptions and limited knowledge of situations or events, often lacking information that might have altered his or her course of action. The decisions the characters faced were more subtle than choosing between right and wrong; the characters had to identify their desired outcome, then choose the option most likely to achieve their desired outcome.

The novel reminded me that seemingly insignificant decisions I make may be of great consequence to someone else. It also reminded me to be charitable toward others who act differently than I think I would under the same conditions, because they may know something that I don't know. ( )

Suffered from a bit too many narrators. But I did like all the characters. Fun read. ( )

A dramatization on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour lured me into reading this novel set in Canada of 1867. In essence it is a tale that sets out to solve the mysterious murder of a fur trader Laurence Jammet. Into this murder investigation a number of sub plots are weaved along with themes of love, jealousy and greed. I am not sure that the number of sub plots added to the overall substance and for me there were coincidences beyond belief. Throughout the story the voice of the narrator changes and I enjoyed this variation as it added to the development of the characters. Overall a good read and one that is deserving of the award. ( )

Well written & gripping - good detail ( )

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