WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARDTHEAKSTONS CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEARAs winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Canada’s Dove River in 1867, a man is brutally murdered and a seventeen-year-old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin head north toward the forestand the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township—journalists, Hudson Bay Company men, trappers, traders—but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One by one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen, and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two missing sisters, a forgotten Native culture, and a fortune in stolen furs. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humour into a gripping historical tale, an exhilarating thriller, and a keen murder mystery. | The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, Paperback | Indigo Chapters