The Call of the Wild

What follows is the Klondike as a working dog knows it — snow falling on his tongue and biting like fire, the traces, the harness, the silent circle of huskies closing over a fallen teammate in the trampled snow. Buck learns to steal and to fight and to survive. Under the courier Perrault he grows craftier and stronger. François, dog-wise, marks his rare mettle early. And beneath the aurora, as the team lifts its mournful chant into the frozen night, an ancient instinct stirs in him. There is a rivalry here, cold and patient, and a wildness that will not stay buried.

London tells it in prose close to the bone, cruelty and tenderness landing in the same breath. This is the story of what a creature becomes when the last comforts fall away, and of the men and dogs met along the trail: Curly, dutiful Dave loyal to the traces until death, and one master, later, who kneels with his head against Buck's. Underneath everything runs a single deep note: the call of the wild, sounding from somewhere older than any fire, growing harder to refuse.