White Fang

White Fang is born in the frozen wild of northern Canada, three-quarters wolf and one-quarter dog. After his mother is captured, he grows up among the dogs of an Indigenous camp, is sold to a cruel man who turns him into a fighting dog, and nearly dies before a mining engineer, Weedon Scott, rescues him and slowly teaches him to trust a human being.

Published in 1906, the novel is told largely from the animal's point of view and follows the reverse journey of The Call of the Wild, from wildness to companionship. Jack London's descriptions of the North and of an animal learning love remain gripping for young and adult readers alike.

Jack London (1876–1916) grew up poor in San Francisco and Oakland and lived a life as wild as his books: an oyster pirate at fifteen, a sailor on a sealing ship to Japan, a tramp, a socialist agitator and a gold seeker in the Klondike in 1897, where he caught scurvy and gathered material for a lifetime.

The Call of the Wild made him famous in 1903, and he became one of the best-paid writers of his day, producing White Fang, The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden among more than fifty books. He died on his California ranch at forty.