Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

Farley, born in 1921, died a few days before his 93rd birthday in 2014. In this memoir, Never Cry Wolf, Farley reveals little about his earlier life that is not comically absurd. He completely omits that he had served on numerous battlefronts for the Canadian military during World War II. Rather, he presents himself as a naive schoolboy dropped into the wilderness to confirm the widely held suspicion that wolves are “murderous savages.” It is only in his preface that Farley gives the date for his excursion as the two years before 1948. If accurate, Farley was in his late twenties when he traveled to the northwest, and the events of the book took place around the winter of 1947-1948. He published this narrative description in 1963.

Farley remained an outspoken, catalyzing figure throughout his life. Some in the literary and scientific communities took great exception to his work, claiming his studies and observations—including the results of The Lupine Project, the basis for Never Cry Wolf—were falsified. Readers may note that Farley’s actions in the narrative often confound people and that he makes no apologies for it: He does not tell the bush pilot who flies him to the frozen tundra that he has loaded dozens of cases of beer into a canoe below the plane, making takeoff almost impossible; he maintains a standoffish relationship with Mike, even though he uses the trapper’s cabin as his headquarters for an entire year for $10 (Canadian); he manages to rile the entire population of the frontier town, Bouchet, by unapologetically telling them their understanding of wolves is entirely incorrect.