Early twentieth-century readers devoured James Oliver Curwood's tales of America's rugged, untamed north. Creator of the half-wolf Kazan and the grizzly bear Thor (in the novel that later inspired the movie The Bear), Curwood left a legacy of enduring wildlife classics. In the only full-length biography of this fascinating figure, Judith A. Eldridge traces his development both as a writer and as an early conservationist, a one-time hunter whose experience with a real bear made him a preservationist of the wild.