The Work of Wolves

Kent Meyers powerfully written novel is set in the South Dakota plains, home of the Black Hills, Badlands, several Lakota reservations, cowboys and ranches, sweeping winds, bitter cold winters and dust. Strong themes of family history, family duty, and personal freedom resonate throughout - "Look around you. Cages are everywhere." Also crucial to the plot is the importance of doing what is right. To do the right thing. To be true to oneself. To make good choices. But, as one character states clearly, "Being right is not enough. Even if this is the best thing to do. Even if it is the only thing. We must not think we are pure." Three men, an improbable trio of strangers, come together to try to do what is right in an impossible situation. Carson Fielding, a loner who has a talent for training horses, finds himself in an untenable position. His father, owner of a small ranch in Twisted Tree, South Dakota, is going through tough financial times and promises Carson's skilled services to Magnus Yarborough, the wealthiest man around. Yarborough is also a sadistic control freak who tried to get the best of Carson when he was just a fourteen year-old youth buying his first horse. Carson precociously held his own against Yarborough then, but he never forgot how the man tried to take advantage of him, an idealistic adolescent boy. Magnus never forgot either. Fielding is to train three horses and teach Magnus' young wife how to ride. He makes it clear from the start, he does not "break" horses - he trains them. He makes the ground rules, not Magnus, and as long as he works with the horses they are his. "He is not a hired hand and he does things his own way at his own speed." Although they get off to a bad start, Carson and Rebecca Yarborough work well together as they ride out over the prairie. She loves the horses and the freedom of riding across the open plains. Reb, as Carson calls her, feels caged at the ranch, as Magnus won't allow her to perform any work and there is little else for her to do. Her husband totally controls her and she feels a prisoner in her own home. She fears the man she married. As is expected, the two discover they love each other, but their desire remains unconsummated. They want to do the honorable thing and above all do not want to do anything which would sully their feelings - their relationship. After a week or two, Magnus works-up a good hatred, accompanied by the green-eyed monster, as he loses control of the situation and himself. But he hated Carson, his self-confidence and refusal to be intimidated, long before he suspected him of having an affair with Rebecca. Yarborough is a vindictive man. His rage is relentless and knows no bounds. Earl Walks Alone is a Lakota teen who excels in mathematics and hopes to win a scholarship to MIT. He is another loner. He doesn't drink so he is not welcome to party with his peers and thus becomes the butt of their jokes. His defense mechanism against his pain and isolation is to pr

It is difficult to do justice to a novel of this scope and emotional depth. The Work of Wolves is an experience that evokes South Dakota's great wilderness and the spirit of those who make their living from the land. What begins as an uneven exchange between an arrogant, powerful ranch owner and a teenaged boy who purchases a horse from him, flowers into a battle of wills, when wealthy Magnus Yarborough entices a now twenty-five-year old Carson Fielding to his land to train three horses and teach his wife to ride. Fielding is bound by a contract his father made, a fact that goes against Carson's spirit and the way he works with animals. Yarborough senses a stoic invulnerability in Carson, but imagines he can break any man with his money and his will. As the drama unfolds, circumstance unexpectedly connects four lives, Carson Fielding, Earl Walks Alone, Ted Kills Many and Willi Schubert, a German exchange student with a love of all things Lakota. Fielding bears the immediate consequences and has the most to lose in facing the wrath of Magnus Yarborough, but the four young men are ultimately bound by their actions, their friendship deepening with the desperation of their endeavor, a younger generation coming to understand the motivations of their forebears, the way a relationship with the land can either enrich a man or strip away his connections to others, depending on the kind of man he is. This massive country is a great leveler, keeper of the truth, its lessons irrevocable. In this novel, separate worlds overlap, rich and poor, ranches and reservation, although the Lakota Indians remain puzzled by the habits of the whites: "They find a forest and cut it down to settle there...they find a prairie, they plant trees...find a swamp, they drain it...find a desert, they make a lake to irrigate." The cowboy, the immigrant and the Indians unite to rectify a wrong, to deny the cruelty sparked by a loss of control. If Yarborough shows the bland mien of power's indifference, Carson, Willi, Earl and Ted are the faces of humanity, each carefully navigating his own terrain until bound by a common cause, a rejection of Yarborough's "suffering as message". The author's genius lies in the telling of stories, Nazi Germany with all its grand delusions, robber barons pushing a reservation to pen the unwanted into defined spaces, a young man's vision of his grandfather's spiritual endowment until forced to find his own identity. As disparate elements fold into a vast and chilling landscape, this novel transports the reader to another, finer consciousness, where human flaws are forgivable, but heartlessness is not: "Maybe bad ideas rotted from the inside out, swelling and bloating from their own incoherence, and time was a sieve in which they caught and through which they could not flow." Meyer draws the reader into this drama as if gentling a horse, the story is as primitive as the land and as grounded as generations of families who make their mark in such coun

In a powerful opening scene, fourteen-year-old Carson Fielding, of Twisted Tree, South Dakota, approaches Magnus Yarborough, the slickest and wealthiest man in town, negotiates to buy a horse, and succeeds--surprisingly, for his named price. Twelve years later, Carson, broke, takes a job training some of Yarborough's horses and teaching Yarborough's wife to ride. Once again, he succeeds in his mission, but this time he makes a permanent enemy of Yarborough. Carson's view of the world is limited to horses, the ranch, what he has learned from his late grandfather, and his recent discovery of love, but his knowledge grows when he is contacted by Earl Walks Alone, a Lakota teenager, and Willi Schubert, a German foreign exchange student, asking for help. Earl, a senior in high school, has discovered a small pen containing three starving and thirsty horses, exposed to the elements in a remote area, hidden from all roads. When Carson investigates with the boys, he is stunned, recognizing these as Yarborough's horses, and he suddenly understands why they are being tortured. Along with Ted Kills Many, an alcoholic Lakota in his late twenties, the four decide to rescue the horses and to do it in the spirit of Iktomi, the trickster of Indian lore. Though the idea of rescuing the horses controls the action, the rescue is more important symbolically than in real-time. Each of the four young men has special reasons, clearly developed, for identifying with the plight of these animals--reasons connected to their pasts, their understanding of how man and nature are related, and their understanding of the uses and abuses of power. Meyers creates much more than a simple coming-of-age story here, delving into the very essence of life itself, while keeping his style unpretentious and his plot lines simple. Stories the characters learn from their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles connect the various themes, unite the characters, and show the thematic overlaps of cultures. As the young characters recall these often dramatic stories and hear new ones, they also understand that underlying all stories are dreams, some living and some destroyed, some emanating from culture and some coming from within. Featuring characters with whom the reader identifies, and filled with realistic details about farming, ranching, and everyday life, past and present, this rich novel stretches the imagination, challenges the thinking, and keeps us totally entertained every step of the way. Mary Whipple

I loved this book. The author, who teaches at Black Hills State University, has written a story of people in the reservation and ranchland of central South Dakota that strikes far deeper than his previous, Minnesota-based short stories ("Light in the Crossing," which is terrific) and novel, "The River Warren." A slender plot-line for its 400+ pages, it glows with intensity at each turn, and while your desire to know what happens next presses you onward, you pause along with the author to reflect on the thoughts and feelings of the characters who are pulled into the flow of events that begins with the purchase of a horse and leads inevitably to the burning of a house. There is humor, suspense, family drama, surprises, ironies of all kinds, a smoldering romance, conflicts, animosity, suspense, farce, triumphs and sorrows in Meyers' novel. And all is woven around a continuing meditation on moral complexity and finally the great difficulty of doing the right thing when there are deep emotions, conflicting points of view and only degrees of violence and loss to choose from. The four young men at the center of this story, two Indians, a cowboy, and a German exchange student, each bears a legacy of history that pulls them together in the single effort to rescue three horses. Meyers makes them come to life vividly through action, thought, and dialogue. Around them is another dozen or so characters, just as carefully drawn and revealed through illuminating flashes of incident. And as in his other work, there is the continuing presence of the landscape and the seasons, as summer turns to autumn and snow-driven winter. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the West, richly detailed and engaging characters, and multi-layered narrative where ironic parallels multiply and fascinating ambiguities abound. Especially interesting is the characterization of the young cowboy, whose ancestry in American literature dates back to Owen Wister's Virginian. Here is that same set of values, courage, pure-heartedness, and self-containment, 100 years later, set in conflict with a cunning villain. It is moving to learn what has become of him.

I'd suggest (to the reviewer that complained of excessive writing), that they slow down and think about how the writing would sound if it were read aloud. Like Moby Dick, it's easy to get caught up in a great story about whaling, -and ignore the metaphor it is prized for. This story's simple, good and evil, the difference between robbers and thieves, honor and knavery. Compellingly told, with interesting characters. The writing craftmanship is expert. In my opinion the real value lies in the timeless philosophy essayed.