London (dead 80 years ago this year) might be described as a real life Hemingway. He was a deep sea sailor, a tramp, a gold prospector on the Klondike, a pioneer socialist, a war correspondent, a crusading journalist, and above all a busy professional writer before his death at 40. The Son of the Wolf was his first book, published in 1900, and much of it effects his own experiences in the Great North Land. It is eked out by a selection from London's other Northland stories, though arguably none of these is as good as the collection called Smoke Belle, which seemed better than ever when I reread it recently.