In a striking Vintage Classics package: Jack London's two most beloved tales of survival in Gold Rush Alaska.
Jack London based these two novels on his experiences in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. The canine hero of The Call of the Wild is Buck, a pampered pet in California who is stolen and forced to be a sled dog in the Alaskan wilderness. There he suffers the brutal conditions of nature and equally brutal treatment by a series of masters, until he learns to heed his long-buried instincts, turning his back on civilization and joining a wolf pack. White Fang charts the reverse journey, as a fierce wolf-dog hybrid born in the wild is eventually tamed. White Fang is first taken in as a cub by a band of Indians, but when their dogs refuse to accept him as one of them, he grows up violent, defensive, and dangerous. Traded to a man who stages fights, he faces dogs, wolves, and lynxes in gruesome battles to the death, until he is rescued by a gold miner who gradually earns his trust and devotion. Both novels grippingly dramatize the harshness of the natural world and what lies beneath the thin veneer of human civilization.
