It has been more than two decades since the wolf recovery operation was launched in Yellowstone National Park, and interest in the predators has not ebbed at all. Park visitors continue to congregate in the predawn and pre-sunset hours in the Lamar Valley on the northern end of Yellowstone. Magazine features and books are still being written about the ongoing fate of the wolves.

Among these titles, The Killing of Wolf Number Ten: The True Story, documents the shooting death of a founding member of the Yellowstone packs, Decade of the Wolf: Returning The Wild to Yellowstone was written by the biologist who oversaw the early days of the wolf program in the park, and Charting Yellowstone Wolves is a collection of charts that trace the genealogy of the park’s various wolf packs.

This October another book will be released: American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West. Written by Nate Blakeslee, a Texan, the book follows the life of O-Six, an alpha female and oftenseen Yellowstone wolf; some would say among the most famous of Yellowstone’s wolves.

Mr. Blakeslee weaves together the various controversial and essential elements of the park’s wolf recovery program as he tells her tale. There are the livestock industry and elk hunters, who see wolves as rapacious predators impacting their bottom line and way of life. There are territorial battles between the Yellowstone packs themselves, as well as conflicts between wolves and grizzlies. Then there are the legal and political battles on the protection of these wolves, and other endangered species.

Key to Mr. Blakeslee’s page-turning narrative are copious notes he borrowed from Rick McIntyre, a Yellowstone ranger who probably has spent more days than anyone observing the park’s wolves, and Laurie Lyman, who shared 2,500 pages of her Yellowstone wolf observations.

With those resources, along with his own experiences, Mr. Blakeslee has composed a rich, poignant story of wolf recovery in Yellowstone and its impacts on the surrounding countryside and communities. He takes the reader into the wolf dens, to their rendezvous sites, on the hunt with them, and observes their territorial wars up close.

Mr. Blakeslee also tries to understand those opposed to Yellowstone wolves and who would rather put a bullet through them than admire them.

American Wolf is a bittersweet story, one that soars with the richness of unadulterated wildness, but which also crashes to the ground with the death of this one wolf.

Some will take pause at the story and O-Six’s legacy, while others might wonder about the fuss.

At day’s end, in this ever-shrinking world, preserving wildness matters, if for no other reason than that we can still glimpse the primeval.