The Painter by Peter Heller was the very first book I wrote about for Reading Well. Later, I wrote up The River, and while it preceded these scribblings, his even earlier novel Dog Star remains one of my favorite novels ever.
So, I’m a Heller fan.
2023’s The Last Ranger hit at an incredibly opportune time personally. Without knowing its content, I happened to read it just before a family trip to Yellowstone, where the novel is set. Heller’s gifts are in his descriptions of the natural world and in his explorations of alternate modes of contemporary masculinity, and both are on full display in The Last Ranger.
The protagonist is indeed a ranger (although certainly not the final one), deeply devoted to the preservation of the beauty of the Park, a constant struggle against both local political forces that resent the area and the never-ending selfish stupidity of the ever-present waves of tourists. He’s also, like many of Heller’s protagonists, middle-aged, a bit damaged, and deeply committed to a sense of ethics guided by a reverence for and understanding of the natural world.
The wolves of Yellowstone–reintroduced in the mid 1990s and currently thriving–feature heavily, and one of the joys of Heller’s writing, which is never didactic, is nevertheless leaving the novel feeling better informed about the geology, ecology, and flora and fauna of the area, including a fantastic set of descriptions of just how important apex predators are to entire ecosystems.
This is a mystery, one with violence towards both people and other mammals at its center. There are some satisfying twists and turns in the plot, and the protagonist’s struggles (both successful and not) to form meaningful relationships are written with a deep humanity, one that, in the end, dictates the final outcome in a way that prevents there being any single, simple resolution.
I like that, and I love the comfort of Heller’s writing. Very strongly recommended.