From the Bookshelf of The Perks Of Being A Book Addict…

Once There Were Wolves

Charlotte McConaghy

Start date: March 1, 2025

Finish date: March 31, 2025

Discussion: Group Books of the Month (BotM)

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What Members Thought

May 14, 2022 Kelli V Spann rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mostly-loved, magical-realism, life-lessons, mystery-crime, mans-bestie, botmc

There are languages without words and violence is one of them.

A hauntingly beautiful tale of the inner, and outer, battle between man and his environment. A tale of the efforts of rewilding and the importance of the wolf, to those efforts.

My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart.

I was raised by a father who innately understood this battle, the relationship between man There are languages without words and violence is one of them.

A hauntingly beautiful tale of the inner, and outer, battle between man and his environment. A tale of the efforts of rewilding and the importance of the wolf, to those efforts.

My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart.

I was raised by a father who innately understood this battle, the relationship between man and nature. He was held by convention, but knew the importance of this symbiotic relationship, and worked to impart what he knew, to his children. At the time I could not fully understand the wisdom of those lessons, but in time, have come to realize fully his efforts. It is in this appreciation that I felt so deeply for the lessons found in this story. My dad, too, was well versed in how man hurts man. He was a coroner more than half his long life, and ever a deep thinker. Nothing rattled him, except he felt strongly that we learn what we need by listening to the earth speak, to nature and to animals.

If you truly think wolves are the blood spillers, then you're blind...We do that. We are the people killers, the children killers. We're the monsters.

Conservation is a word that imparts the protection, preservation, management, or restoration of wildlife and of natural resources such as forests, soil, and water. How what we take from nature we use, and take no more than is required. In using we return the earth back to the way it was, and try and minimize the environmental footprint we leave. We try hard not to upset the balance and use a laissez faire approach.

This book imparts its lessons in a unobtrusive manner, in narrative form and a story of a girl, who felt too much, and the efforts she takes to rewild her part of Scotland. It’s a tale of murder and intrigue. The book delivers its message, weaved between the words on the page.

It is telling of mankind how we take the time and effort to learn, and to impart these environmental lessons of conservation, of rewilding, of being a part of the solution and to leave this earth, as little damaged as possible, because we lived. It is an essential part of an evolved person to, after knowing these lessons, to impart them to the next generation.

This story stirred in myself the voices silenced by a lifetime of living life away from my family, and my roots. I welcomed the stirrings, as well as the memory of the lessons I lived, while still at home. The story unsettles, as it should, those of us who never learned, or have forgotten the lessons we innately should know. We are either part of the problem, or of the solution.

The forest has a beating heart we can’t see. ...more

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Feb 02, 2023 Bruin Mccon rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-audiobook, suspense-or-thriller, pub-2021, set-in-scotland

This was, as we used to say back in the day, a heavy book. Inti is in the Scottish Highlands, trying to introduce wolves back into the environment. Her sister Aggie is there but silent. She doesn’t talk but signs her sister in their special twin sign language. Reading about her, I wondered if she was a figment of Inti’s imagination.

The thing is, Inti was most definitely on the verge of losing her shit. The wolves have been killing animals and the town is calling for the wolves to all be eliminat ...more

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Dec 14, 2021 Karen D rated it it was amazing

Shelves: family, literary-fiction, 5-stars, cultural, crime, surprise-twist, destructive-friendships, domestic-problems, detective, ambiguous-ending

I read a few chapters of this, and thought how much the style reminded me of Migrations. Then checked and realized it was the same author haha *facepalm*.
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Synopsis: Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister to reintroduce wolves to the remote Highlands. Her efforts at conservation are not appreciated by the local farmers however, and when a farmer is killed, she knows that everyone will blame the wolves.
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Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, animal cruelty
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I really enjoyed this. I love ...more

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