by Jack London
First published 1998
Buck is a large, well-fed dog living on a California ranch when men with clubs and rope tear him away from everything he knows. He is sold into service as a sled dog in the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush, where the cold is brutal and the other dogs will kill him if he shows weakness. He learns fast. He fights, pulls, and endures under a succession of owners, some cruel, one kind. All the while something older than memory stirs in him, a pull toward the wolves and the wilderness beyond the firelight. This collection pairs Buck's story with White Fang, which runs the opposite direction: a wild wolf-dog born in the Canadian territories who moves, slowly and painfully, toward the world of men. Five short stories round out the volume, including the bone-cold survival tale "To Build a Fire" and the darkly comic "That Spot." Together they form the full range of Jack London's animal fiction, where dogs and wolves stand in for every creature caught between wildness and domestication.
Genres: short-stories, animals, classic-literature, survival, american-fiction, adventure
Vibes: dark, gritty, introspective, lyrical, primal, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, dual-narrative, man-versus-nature, transformation-arc
Setting: California, Yukon, Canadian territories, Klondike
Period: Klondike Gold Rush, 19th-century, 20th-century
400 pages · Paperback · Oxford University Press
Content warnings: abuse, animal-death, violence
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