Rachel Caine is an expert on wolves; she’s not so good with people. When she falls pregnant after a drunken New Year’s Eve party on the Idaho reservation which has been her home for a decade, Rachel moves back to her native Cumbria, where the Earl of Annerdale plans to reintroduce the grey wolf to England’s green and pleasant land – or, at least, to the considerable chunk of it which he owns.
Sarah Hall's fifth novel is a meditation on the liminal: political borders, family rifts, class differences, ecological cut-offs. Part chase thriller, part hymn to the joys (and trials) of new motherhood, The Wolf Border has plenty of the filigree touches fans of Hall's writing have come to expect – lake water is "rustling with light", clouds are "webbed lungs" – and a cast of compassionately-drawn characters, from needy brother to lusty vet.
But the wolves – now you see them, now you don’t as they slip in and out of reality and dreams – are unquestionably the stars of the show.
