SELECTED REVIEWS OF
THE LOOP

"[Evans’] richest work to date...compulsively readable."
--The Denver Post

"Epic...compelling...crackles with suspense."
--The Seattle Times

"Brim[s] with cowboy stoicism and wide-open spaces...Evans possesses an unusual ability to write big, all-encompassing, almost cinematic scenes."
--USA Today

The New York Times Book Review, Erik Burns
"[Evans'] true gifts are demonstrated in his colorful, captivating depictions of the land."

The Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bukowski
"It's an entertaining story, and Mr. Evans does a good job of describing the kind of controversy over wildlife that has torn apart many Western communities."

The Los Angeles Times
"Fascinating...Moving...A big, engrossing book [with] an unexpected ending that surprises mightily."

San Francisco Chronicle
"Sprawling...Compelling...A real page-turner."

Houston Chronicle
"Engaging...Intense and gripping."

Chicago Sun-Times
"Gripping...Evans knows how to depict complicated emotions and interactions; he paints a compelling portrait."

Booklist
The secret to Evans' success is that there's something for everyone in his smooth-gliding novels. His first, The Horse Whisperer (1995), has pleased readers and moviegoers alike with its Big Sky country setting, mythic links between human beings and horses, and electric love story. Evans continues to mine this fertile terrain with skill and ardor in his second novel, this time spotlighting another American icon, the wolf. Our fascination with wolves is a profound one, and Evans makes good use of it, constructing dramatic confrontations between a pack of wolves, a small ranching community called Hope, Montana, and a federal biologist. Buck Calder, a direct descendant of the so-called wolfers of a hundred years ago who massacred wolves by the thousands, is a wealthy and arrogant rancher and philanderer and Hope's most vocal advocate for wolf annihilation after a wolf kills a dog in sight of his baby grandson. To combat Calder's threat of violence, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service calls in a top wolf biologist, Helen Moss, a wry young woman struggling with a broken heart. As she and Buck square off, Buck's misfit son, Luke, a handsome boy with a stutter who is already in love with the wolves, falls hard for Helen, adding fuel to the fire. Evans, bless him, has a thing for strong and tender women characters, a knack for clever dialogue, and a gift for wedding romance with suspense. And he's even handy with metaphors. The "loop" of the title refers to both a diabolical snare for killing wolf cubs and the grand circular scheme of things, as in "the living and the dead were joined in a loop as ancient and immutable as the moon that arced above them." A fine and thoughtful popular novel.
-- Donna Seaman
Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kirkus Reviews
A drier version of Jaws, from the best-selling British novelist (The Horse Whisperer, 1995) whose distinctions so far are of scale rather than content. Hope, Montana, is not exactly the crossroads of a million lives. Barely more than a crossroads itself, its a quiet ranching community whose inhabitants are mostly descendants of the original white settlers who moved in a hundred years ago. But a frightening rash of brutal wolf attacks against both cattle and people makes Hope the center of more attention than it had ever looked for. Dan Prior, the local rep of the US Wildlife Service, is an Eastern transplant whose long struggle to gain acceptance from the locals is threatened by his role as the enforcer of hated government conservation laws, and his life is suddenly made all the more difficult when the cattlemen (like ranchers Buck Calder and Abe Harding) take it upon themselves to kill the wolves in defiance of the Endangered Species Act. When the hunters are arrested and tried, a media riot puts Hope on the map and brings in its wake environmental crackpots as well as bona fide experts like biologist Helen Ross. Helen is opposed to killing the wolves, but her position is compromised by the adulation of Buck Calder's teenaged son Luke, who falls in love with her. Luke's troubled family is haunted by the death of his brother Henry some years earlier; his mother Eleanor responded to the death, and to her husband's repeated infidelities, by losing her Catholic faith and retreating into depression and despair. Meantime, Helen really just wants to get to the bottom of the wolf slayings, while Buck is looking for trouble and Dan just wants to keep the townsfolk from blowing their lids altogether. Ah, how will it all end? The same sort of sentimental pastiche, written in the same New Age Harlequin prose, that made The Horse Whisperer one of the most inexplicable success stories of the 1990s. (First printing of 650,000; Literary Guild main selection; author tour)
-- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

21 WEEKS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST
SELECTED REVIEWS OF
THE HORSE WHISPERER

Booklist
The advance ballyhoo about this first novel, as well as the huge advance paid to its author, screenwriter Nicholas Evans, is more than enough to make the skeptical reader wince. Hold back those winces if you can, because this is a book of rare power and beauty, a story told simply but elegantly. Teenager Grace Maclean loses a leg in a terrible accident while riding her horse, Pilgrim. Grace and Pilgrim are both emotionally scarred as well as physically devastated by the accident. Realizing that the fates of her daughter and the horse are inextricably linked, Grace's mother, high-powered editor and journalist Annie Graves, launches an all-out campaign to find a "horse whisperer," someone who can cure troubled horses with only a calm voice and a soothing touch. She finds her savior in Tom Booker, a man well known in equestrian circles for his almost mystical skills with horses. Annie packs up Grace and Pilgrim, leaves Grace's father with his law practice in New York, and moves to Montana to try to convince the horse whisperer to help them. Most of the novel describes Tom's work to rebuild all the lives that have been shattered by the accident. Inevitably, love blossoms between the gentle horseman and the uprooted sophisticate, a love with both wonderful and tragic consequences. Expect this outstanding novel to be the talk of the season: it has a 600,000-copy first printing, and Robert Redford has already bought the movie rights for a cool $3 million. The numbers are remarkable, to be sure, but the most remarkable thing about this book is that it actually earns the great popularity it seems destined to enjoy.
-- George Needham
Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved