Last Appalachian Wolf

When Dr. Michael discovered a lengthy newspaper article that described a 7-day wolf hunt held in January 1897, he realized he had the seed for his next intriguing novel. In the resulting story, fiction is employed to detail the exciting and traumatic lives of timber wolves in the Central Appalachians during the 1750-1900 period. By describing the unique challenges facing successive generations of wolf packs, Dr. Michael reveals how human intrusion and a series of related historic events disrupted the lives of wolves and led to a precipitous decline in their numbers. Readers are provided the opportunity to evaluate the various agents that ultimately led to the demise of the iconic predator that played such an important role in balancing the mountain ecosystem full of deer, elk, buffalo, and passenger pigeons. The story follows a succession of fictional pack leaders that must adapt to changing conditions created by human invaders if their packs are to survive, including Canus whose pack survived a wild fire set by Iroquois; Castana who relocated his pack to avoid construction of the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike over Cheat Mountain; Venali whose pack was forced to abandon its territory due to the building and maintenance of Cheat Summit Fort during the Civil War; Silva whose pack was decimated by traps and strychnine; and Montani who struggled to survive the relentless pursuit of hounds and hunters.