What if I were to write such a book? I asked myself. A book about the forest world I grew up on the edge of in northern Illinois, the one I'd often camped and kayaked in as an adult in Minnesota. But what kind of animal should I write about? And very quickly the answer came . . . wolves. Wolves, I suppose, because I love dogs, the wolf's distant cousin, and have kept a dog at my side all the adult life. (When I was growing up, my parents wouldn't let me have one.) Wolves because they exist here in Minnesota. But wolves, too, because their family life is like ours in so many ways. I knew I could write about them, staying true to their wolf natures, and still build a family story, the kind of story I value.

Before I could do anything else, I had to learn about wolves. I knew only the surfaces about them which most of us know. So I spent about three months reading books by experts on wolf behavior. I visited a wolf sanctuary. And slowly, slowly, I found my main character . . . Runt. From the moment I recorded his birth, I quite fell in love.