Once There Were Wolves is a 2021 novel by the Australian author Charlotte McConaghy.
It was the winner of the 2022 Indie Book Awards Book of the Year – Fiction.
Synopsis Inti is the head of Cairngorms National Park's Wolf Project in Scotland. The project aims to release 14 wolves into the park as a part of their rewilding project. The project is met with opposition from local farmers who worry about their sheep flocks. Then a dead body is discovered and Inti begins to suspect a local policeman of the murder.
Critical reception
Writing in The Newtown Review of Books Ann Skea was impressed with the novel: "Charlotte McConaghy draws the reader into the lives of her characters, and realistically coveys the closeness, secrets, fears and mutual support of a small community where people have grown up together and know each other well...Ecology, climate change and self-sufficiency are casually woven in as underlying themes, but it is the creatures – human and wolf – that are the heart of the story."
See also 2021 in Australian literature
Notes Dedication: "For my little one" Epigraph: "One beast and only one howls in the woods by night." - Angela Carter
Publication history
After the novel's initial publication by Hamish Hamilton it was reprinted as follows:
2021 Flatiron Books, USA 2022 Chatto and Windus, UK
The novel was also translated into Swedish, German, Finnish, Dutch and Danish in 2022, Greek in 2023, and French in 2024.
Awards
2022 Indie Book Awards Book of the Year – Fiction, winner 2022 Davitt Award – Best Adult Novel, winner
References