S: Summer E: Evie A: Alpha S: Sweetgrass O: Opening up to N: Nature * O: Orrrroooo! F: Forever Wolf * T: Tenderness H: Home E: Endures * W: Wildness O: Our L: Love is F: Fierce — Read on for an exclusive excerpt from SEASON OF THE WOLF: Pups spend their first years wild. Then comes the dreaded Year of First Shoes when they have to begin to learn how to be in skin. The First Shoes are supposed to wait for the adult wolves to come before they get into the water, but they are too anxious. . . Something splashes, followed by excited yips and yells made by children who aren’t used to the form until one of the older ones calls out: “Tasha felled!” Leonora starts to run, hampered by sandals. I run, too, hampered by the jostling of injured ribs, but Constantine races past me, wolf-fast on two legs. The children huddle to the side of the dock as his feet pound down the dock and he launches himself far out into the water, cutting through it like an otter. At the edge of the dock, I lie down, my arms in the water where…

Things can go south really quickly when you’re a wolf. The wolves of the Great North Pack cannot pass as human, or at least not for long because for three days out of thirty, during what they call the Iron Moon, the Pack must be wild. With no fingers or words to protect themselves, they are simply wolves—large and self-reflective wolves—but still, a nuisance species easily killed by a bullet or a bolt or a Buick. Since settling in the Adirondacks, the Great North has survived by a combination of secrecy and careful application of human laws and human money. It worked well and they flourished over the 350 years, but then the Pack was discovered by Shifters, ancient enemies who can change but don’t have to be. The Shifters knew not only what the Pack was, but also when they were at their most vulnerable. The Pack fought back but still lost several of its most powerful wolves, a prescription for chaos in a close-knit community tied by bounds of hierarchy. Varya Timursdottir knows the price of chaos. The last of a once-great Russian pack from the rocky, wind-scoured island between the Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean, she…

To anyone who has read, would like to read, or has never heard of THE LAST WOLF, I will make this fast. Promise. My debut, THE LAST WOLF, introduced a pack of what would typically be called werewolves, though they would never say that about themselves. Pack, yes. Wolves, yes. Werewolves, no. These are not men who fight to keep their beast subdued. Their truest form is wolf. Their human form is used to protect this sacred wild. Silver Nilsdottir, the heroine and narrator of THE LAST WOLF is utterly untamed and unabashedly inhuman. She makes no secret of the fact that she is completely baffled by the world away from Homelands, the Great North’s territory in the Adirondacks. Or that she failed Introduction to Human Behaviors four times. Elijah Sorensson, the hero and narrator of A WOLF APART, is Silver’s opposite in most ways. Where she is at the bottom of the pack hierarchy, he is at the top. He is the Alpha of his age group but he is also an Offlander, a wolf who spends most of his time away from Homelands. He is a partner in the successful law firm established with money from the Great…

My interest in wolves was not so much in their physical details, though those are amazing (did you know wolves can smell something a mile away and hear something 6 miles away in the forest or 10 miles away in the open?) I have always been more interested in details about social structure. For example, subordinate wolves often try to bring peace to the pack after a fight between dominants. The more violent the fight, the harder the subordinates try to diffuse the situation with nose kisses and touching and licking. That’s because a Pack must work together to survive. When wolves travel, they put the weakest at the front to set the pace, then sandwich strong and weak wolves, with the Alpha at the back so that he can see everything. When writing about Silver, who is at the dead bottom of the hierarchy, I was curious to read that lower-ranking pack members are often particularly resourceful because they don’t get the pick of the kill and have to use their ingenuity to get enough to eat. I also wanted to know where some of the misconceptions about wolves came from. Like an article in the Journal of Zoology…