Charlotte McConaghy

Once There Were Wolves is a jam-packed novel about, among many other things, passivity in contrast to direct action; it’s about how a single person’s response to massively overwhelming obstacles, obstacles that seem impossible to overcome—whether it be correcting climate change or stopping abusive relationships or altering a familial cycle—can make a lasting difference.

Inti, a biologist who moves to the rural highlands of Scotland for work, is devoted to conservation and wolves and her twin sister, Aggie. Inti doesn’t trust easily, believing the worst in human nature, and the Scottish locals and sheep farmers are equally distrusting of Inti—an outsider who they feel is threatening their livelihood and community as she works to fight climate change by rewilding wolves in their highlands. This conflict between Inti and the locals steadily builds, especially when one of the locals mysteriously disappears after Inti antagonizes this man. Through the mystery of Stuart’s disappearance, the flashback and flash forward of Inti’s life across Australian cityscapes and Canadian forests and Scottish highlands, we learn about how and why Inti has changed from the gentle, “need to toughen up” optimist to the aggressive, closed-off skeptic. And she learns to respond to a community she defensively made an enemy because “‘when you open your heart to rewilding a landscape, the truth is, you’re opening your heart to rewilding yourself’” (189).

From beginning to end, the book seemed to have two speeds—either quick-paced, violent action or long, meandering descriptions—so that by the end of this story, I honestly felt conflicted, unsure of my feelings. So much happens in the last third of the book. It felt like emotional whiplash: I was constantly questioning the narrator’s state of mind (slipping in and out of consciousness, dreamlands, hallucinations, and mirror-synesthesia) and questioning the author’s choices in the resolution. Still, I’m unsure. Or, more accurately, I’d say: it’s complicated. But, still, this is a worthwhile read—one about cruelty and gentleness, empathy and compassion, trust and forgiveness—maybe even because of all the gritty complications.


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Set in the not too distant future when climate change has wiped out most of the wildlife on earth. In Greenland, Franny Stone joined one of the last fishing boats in an attempt to follow the last Arctic terns on their migration to the Antarctic - a move that she promises will lead the boat to fish. It was hard to understand why she would do this, an action that could harm the migrating birds and deplete ocean wildlife even more. That was just one of the problems I had with this book. So much was omitted about what else was happening besides the empty oceans and sky.

Fragments of Franny’s troubled past are woven into the story along the way. At first I associated her dismal nomadic life with the terns’ migration, but eventually it began to appear more like McConaghy had two stories in mind and scrambled them together without much attention to continuity. I’ve heard so many good reports about this book and was surprised to find that it was not to my liking. The unexpected ending did not make up for a disappointing read.… (más)

The novel had an interesting premise: A young woman must convince a sailing vessel to sail all the way south to Antartica, following the probable last migration of the Arctic Tern. The problem I had is that the protagonist was unlikeable, untrustworthy and never was up front with just about everyone in her life. The author unpacks little background secrets along the way and eventually at the end of the novel comes the shocking denouement. I wanted to see the end of the story simply to discover if their trip was successful. The author paints a grim picture of a future world being stripped of species one after another and this she did very well.… (más)