Brenda Peterson is the author of eighteen books, including the novel Duck and Cover, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and I Want to Be Left Behind, selected by the Christian Science Monitor among the Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010. Her most recent work, Your Life Is a Book, was a monthly Oprah book club selection. Peterson's work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and she has contributed environmental commentary to Seattle NPR stations and on animal and environmental issues for the Huffington Post. She lives in Seattle on the shores of Salish Sea.

In the tradition of Peter Matthiessen's Wildlife in America or Aldo Leopold, Brenda Peterson tells the 300-year history of wild wolves in America. It is also our own history, seen through our relationship with wolves. The earliest Americans revered them. Settlers zealously exterminated them. Now, scientists, writers, and ordinary citizens are fighting to bring them back to the wild. Peterson, an eloquent voice in the battle for twenty years, makes the powerful case that without wolves, not only will our whole ecology unravel, but we'll lose much of our national soul.