Seth Kantner

In the continuum of outdoors adventure and nature writing, the truth lies somewhere between Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild and a Dick Cheney “pheasant hunt.” Seth Kanter’s Ordinary Wolves is a striking debut novel that does a nice job of reproducing the hardscrabble realities of native life in Alaska without getting stupid or softening the blows dealt by Mother Nature in such an unforgiving environment. There is much romanticism about life off the grid, but without an understanding of crucial realities—exposed fingers in hundred-below weather will die in ten minutes; they can be warmed in the entrails of a freshly killed moose—it is sentimental, needlessly tragic, or both. Truth sometimes works better as straight facts rather than maudlin analysis; Kantner’s approach is as honest and simple as the windchill. Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; (952) 920-0633; www.bn.com