I have known of this book as long as I can remember because my dad had a copy of it sitting amongst his Dennis Wheatleys and Alistair McLeans. When I was a wee girl I did ask him what it was about and he said it’s about a wolf – which indeed it is.
The story begins in Canada with a team of huskies pulling a sledge on which there is a coffin containing a young lord. There are two men with the dogteam and they are all being tracked by a pack of hungry wolves. The men have just a few bullets, so fire is used to keep the wolves at bay.
One of those wolves is going to turn out to be the father of White Fang, whose mother is half domestic dog and half wolf, and although White Fang was born in the wild, he ends up in an Indian ecampment, with Indians who had previously owned his mother. It’s a big change for White Fang who has a lot to learn about humans and dogs. He doesn’t fit in with the dogs and has a hard life there but things get worse for him when he is sold off to a man who puts him in a cage at a gold rush town and makes a fortune by making White Fang fight dogs, taking bets from gold prospectors.
Eventually things look up for White Fang, who is completely savage due to the ill treatment he has suffered at the hands of men but one man wins him over by kindness.
This was a very unusual read for me and I did wonder if my dad ever got to the end of the book as it was certainly different from what he usually read too, but he is long gone so I’ll never know. I did quite enjoy it and it was obviously written as a sort of moral tale, which you can’t argue with, but one of the reasons why I read White Fang was because Lord Redesdale the Mitford sisters’ father (in the guise of Uncle Matthew), famously read it and refused to read any other books on the grounds that no other book could possibly be as good a read as White Fang. He was a strange man indeed!
I read this on my Kindle and downloaded it from Project Gutenberg which you can do here if you so wish.
I have not read this but saw the movie and it so inflamed me with the cruel treatment of the dog I almost couldn’t watch it. I have another of his books on the kids shelf. Glad you enjoyed it!
Peggy Ann,
I didn’t realise it had been made into a film, I know I wouldn’t like to see dog fights on screen, even if no animals were harmed!
I read this, and every other animal book I could get my hands on, when I was young. They all, apparently, accumulated and stewed and brewed and, eventually, turned me into the animal welfare advocate I am. There’s so much animal cruelty in the real world, though, that I’m not sure I can bear any of the fictional kind.
Joan,
I read a lotof animal books too when I was young, such as Gavin Maxwell’s books and Gerald Durrell. But I seem to have decided at some point that plants were more my thing, probably because they are less trouble!
In grade eight, our school principal would replace our teacher every Friday afternoon. Because he viewed it as a ‘babysitting’ job, he did not prepare lessons, but instead read aloud to us.
I’m not sure what else we heard that year, but I remember White Fang.
Even though the author was American, I always considered this a Canadian classic, I guess because it was set entirely in Canada.
Debbie,
I wasn’t sure that it was all set in Canada, it isn’t easy to flick back with a Kindle and I couldn’t remember where the gold rush port was, where the dog fighting took place. I never thought of Canada as being a place for gold mining, I don’t know enough about Canada obviously. That sounds like a nice way to spend Friday afternoon at school.
I haven’t read this one, but I did read The Call of the Wild in middle school and remember it being very brutal and passionate. I have been to Jack London Square in Oakland, CA where Jack London grew up. There are wolf tracks and other markers with information about his life there – oh, also a statue. He was a really adventurous guy đŸ™‚
Anbolyn,
You know, I hadn’t even realised that he was American. It’s nice that he is being honoured where he grew up, so often author’s homes are left to go to wrack and ruin, when they could be turned into interesting places to visit. I heard Daniel Radcliffe on the radio today, he mentioned Utah and said it was really beautiful, I think you come from that area originally. When you get to the UK I hope you aren’t disappointed!