by Jean Craighead George
This is the sequel to
Julie of the Wolves. It should have been a quick read for me but I have just been busy. And I didn't enjoy the story quite as much, so I would put it aside for a day or two and kind of forget about it... It tells what happens when Julie goes back to live in her father's household, in an Inuit settlement. Shows a lot more of the native culture and how they are slowly adapting some modern ways, rejecting others. There are more characters and interactions between people. Julie has a deep conflict to resolve with her father- he is the one who killed the leader of her wolf pack in the prior book, because wolves kill the muskox his village raise for income. Julie is not sure if she wants to live in a place that embraces modern views which threaten the wolves she sees as brothers. But she gets involved helping her father with the muskoxen, slowly becomes friends with his new wife, and finds to her surprise that a young man in the village- from Russia- has fallen in love with her. When the caribou fail to arrive and animals around them suffer in famine, the wolf pack poses a threat to the muskox herd again, and Julie decides she must lead her wolves away in search of other game.
It was a good story, and I certainly learned some things about Inuit and Yupik cultures. Also about the muskox. I didn't realize they were so small! Of course I enjoyed the parts about wolf behavior, but some parts of the story seemed to resolve a little too quickly or easily. I think one of my favorite scenes was when Julie and her father were arguing with some white biologists, about whether a calf carcass they had found was caribou or moose, and if it had been killed by a wolf or a bear. Their reasoning showed a lot of painstaking observation of wildlife behavior.
I was glad of Julie's final decision at the end of the story. If she had gone the way her companion urged her, I would have been disappointed at how easy it was, and unlikely considering they barely knew each other. Appreciated that she had some foresight!
Rating: 3/5 226 pages, 1994
more opinions:
Inkweaver Review
anyone else?
I loved Julie of the Wolves and didn't realize there is a sequel. I need to look for this!
ReplyDeleteThere's two! I'm reading the third one right now- it's from the wolves' perspective.
ReplyDeleteThese two books were some of the last physical books I owned. I did hope to reread them, and perhaps will one day in ebook format. I don't remember much about them, other than enjoying them a lot.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize there was a third one! Can't wait to see your review of it!