Sarah Hall, Sarah Crown

For almost a decade Rachel Caine has turned her back on home, kept distant by family disputes and her work monitoring wolves on an Idaho reservation. But now, summoned by the eccentric Earl of Annerdale and his controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, she is back in the peat and wet light of the Lake District.

Hall investigates the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, both animal and human. The novel seeks to understand the most obsessive aspects of humanity: sex, love, and conflict; the desire to find answers to the question of our existence; those complex systems that govern the most superior creature on earth. Hall’s other novels include The Electric Michelangelo, The Beautiful Indifference and Mrs Fox.