Overview

This is a realistic novel of the Canadian Northwest, situated on LittleBent Tree Lake in Canada''s Northwest Territories, in which animals are thechief characters. It describes with humour, drama and pathos a wholecommunity of animals and birds and their unceasing struggle to live. It isneither a fantasy nor a treatise. It is fiction, with creatures of theworld playing the main parts in the drama- the beaver, the muskrat, thesilver fox, the whiskey-jack, wolverine and many others.

Themes and Emotions

Along with all theemotions that make any story worth reading- love, hate, fear, envy- here aresuch animal/human qualities as heroism, devotion, mother love, fidelity,cunning, all portrayed through the lives of the book''s characters. Theirloves, hunger, feasts, fights, sadness, gladness, deaths, theirinterrelations, the part played in their lives by winter, summer, thesnows, the winds, the buildings of the beaver, the introduction of fearinto their lives because of the introduction of man, thehunter/trapper- these are combined into a unified plot which draws to anexciting climax.