A heroine of the story twenty-nine year-old wolf biologist Helen Ross separates from her boyfriend and takes a job offered by an old colleague Dan Prior, the local head of the wolf recovery team of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Hope -a fictional town in Montana- where wolves are said to have reappeared.

Her protagonist the anti-hero of the story is the rancher Buck Calder, a powerful man in the community, a ladies’ man, and a bully who is slightly devious, brusque but also charming at times, and somewhat short in the morals department. Those who are close to Buck -if they are not like him- cannot find any space to breathe like his stuttering eighteen-year old son Luke and his frustrated wife Eleanor.

Buck Calder has a mob of ranchers supporting him who believe that the wolves will do away with their cattle and they want them to catch and kill them even if it means going against the state law in defiance of the Endangered Species Act.

The wolves are more interested in hunting deer, elk, or other wild life than cattle, but they won’t let an opportunity pass by if they find little else to hunt except cattle and the strongest in their family is taken away from them that can go after the big game. Wolves live a family-clan life with an alpha male and female and their pups plus a few other wolves for hunting.

Strangely Buck Calder’s son Luke and Helen Ross share a real passion and understanding for the wolves and they try to protect them from the wrath of the ranchers and they eventually team up in their cause and fall for each other in the meantime.

The story starts when a wolf -the alpha male- strays and seemingly tries to take away a baby with his carriage, by moving the carriage away from the porch it was placed on. The baby is Buck Calder’s grandson. One of the family dogs defend the baby and the baby’s mother Kathy- Buck’s daughter- rushes to pick the baby up safely, but the dog is killed. After this, it is a chase between the ranchers and the protectors of the wolves. Who wins at the end is for the reader to find out.

the different viewpoints. This highly dramatic story is written from the many viewpoints of its characters, men, women, or wolves and the author shows his expertise in changing the viewpoint by gently gliding from one character to another without shocking the reader or breaking the continuation of the plotline.

the writer’s prejudiced stand against the ranchers.

Nicholas Evans is from Worcestershire, England. After studying law at Oxford University and graduating with first class honors, he worked as a journalist for three years on the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
During the time when he produced films about US politics and the Middle-East for a current affairs TV program, Weekend World, he traveled to the United States several times.
In 1983 Nicholas Evans made a film about the British director David Lean who became a friend and persuaded Evans to switch from fact to fiction.
Evans’ first novel was published in the fall of 1995, as The Horse Whisperer, which was made into a movie by Robert Redford.
The Loop and The Smoke Jumper, Evans's second and third novels, were also international bestsellers.

The title of the book “The Loop” comes from an old fashioned, brutal wolf snare in the shape of a loop that can kill nine pups at the same time. It also refers to the flow of the story as it comes to a full circle at the end.

The writer -I felt- has written this book by taking a stand that favors the side of the wildlife and those that try to protect it to the detriment of the ranchers, thus making the book a testament to an ideology rather than just telling his story. Still the many characters are richly drawn with their past histories explaining their present behavior.

The Loop is a gripping, captivating story of survival; therefore, I recommend it.

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Created Oct 05, 2004 at 12:37pm • Submit your own review...