Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

 

Inty Flynn has arrived in a remote Scottish village with a team of scientists.  The group is there to work on reintroducing wolves back into the environment.  Inty has worked on similar projects in Alaska and Yellowstone and is a wolf expert.  She expects resentment and fear from the people living there, most of whom are sheep farmers and she is not disappointed.  The people are adamantly against bringing wolves into their lives.  Intry tells them about the ways that wolves improve the wild.  Predators are necessary to keep the animals that graze down, so that they don't eat all the young growth of trees and so that the weak and old are taken from the herds.  But the populace just expects that the wolves will kill their livestock and present a danger to humans, even though Inty has explained that wolves are shy creatures, afraid and leery of humans.

Along with her knowledge, Inty has brought her twin sister, Aggie.  Aggie doesn't go out, her mind shattered by a marriage when her husband regarded her as his property and enforced that belief with his fists.  The women have fled from him and Aggie's greatest fear is that he will track them down and force his way back into their lives.  She only trusts Inty as she and Inty have always lived together and been there for each other.  Most people don't even know that Inty has a sister.

As time goes on, Inty starts a relationship with the local police chief, Duncan.  Duncan also has a history with violence but Inty slowly starts to believe that she might have a future with him.  At least, until Stuart is killed.  He is a local farmer, vocal against the wolf project and furious with Inty as she has outed him as a wifebeater.  When he is killed, Inty knows that the town will think the wolves were responsible and she is right.  Can Inty protect those she loves, Aggies and the wolves?

I listened to this book and it was a great choice.  The prose is slow and haunting and the narrator reflected that.  I had time to settle in and imagine myself in the remote Scottish highlands, to feel the love Inty had for her sister and the wolves and to feel the fear that Inty feels as she comes to believe that everything she loves will be taken from her.  Along the way, I learned quite a bit about wolves and their place in the ecology of a forest.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.