New novel from local author tells tall tails

Wolves, gold, pioneers, prospectors, pick axes, romance, dog sleds, log cabins, Mounties, mountains and Malamutes come together to make an authentic and riveting Canadian adventure written by Beaver Valley author Dorris Heffron.

City Wolves follows Meg Wilkinson as she leaves home and tragedy in Nova Scotia for the rough and wild territory of the Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s. Meg's trailblazing tendency, both literal and figurative, leads her to become the first female veterinarian in Canada.

Meg discovers men and women of all kinds who prove there is no mold for human beings. She falls in love with the independent, spirited sled dogs of the north whose history was inspiration for her veterinary studies.

Meg's story is laced with the Inuit tale of Ike and Piji, an ancient couple of the Malamute tribe who raise wolf pups as children.

It's a beautiful picture of the variety of the human race and the importance of that unique mix.

Heffron's history as an author is one of pioneering. She wrote three books for teenagers, at a time when literature was labelled "children's" or "adults" and nothing in between. She then wrote an adult novel, A Shark in the House, about a female dentist.

She started working on the idea for her latest book after her beloved dog, Frauzie, died. She got an Alaskan Malamute pup and called her Yukon Sally. Her vet told her that the Malamute would be an independent thinker, more like a wolf than any other dog. She fell in love.

Heffron discovered that the Malamute glory days were indeed the days of the Klondike Kings and the Gold Rush. She took a trip to the Canadian North, going as far north as one can on the mainland. Yukon Sally led Heffron along the trails, and the pair marveled at the great white north.

She came up with the story of Meg Wilkinson, the first female veterinarian, so she could take her reader across Canada and then into the Gold Rush.

"People expect that you're going to do it in that extreme feminist way - how hard it was for her," said Heffron from her home near Thornbury in between book tour stops. "Women weren't always oppressed; there were always men who thought they were really cool because of [what they were doing] and facilitated them."

Heffron doesn't try to make her wolf characters and her human characters the same. She says the theme of her book isn't that people are just like wolves or that women are just like men.

"It's really about the two different sexes and all that's between their needing each other," said Heffron. "And that's the deeper theme - the interconnectedness of people and animals. That's what we need to recognize."

There isn't a specific audience for City Wolves, and Heffron wrote her novel so that the meaning would be infinite, because the people she writes about are infinite.

She calls the book her collective novel, and says although it was a 10-year project she's been writing it all her life.

City Wolves is an historical fiction novel with some characters from history and some from Heffron's imagination. And much of the plot is based on real events.

"I thought it made the story more engrossing and artful," said Heffron.

The read is easy, but the digestion lasts long after the pages are turned. The real-life aspect of the story makes it a compelling and authentic tale.

Heffron and her husband Don Gauer live in a home they built at Little Creek Wolf Range off the Beaver Valley Road with their Malamutes Yukie two and Jake.

City Wolves was published by Blue Butterfly Books and is available by order at most bookstores or online at Amazon.com.

Heffron will be at the L.E. Shore Library on Sunday, Nov. 16 to read passages from her book at 1:30 p.m.