Coyote is three years old when she leaves her family in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario and embarks on a 500-mile odyssey eastward in search of a territory of her own and a mate to share it with. Journeying by night through the dead of winter, she endures extreme cold, hunger, and a harrowing crossing of the St. Lawrence River in Montreal before her cries of loneliness are finally answered in the wilds of Maine. The mate she finds must gnaw off a paw to escape a trap. The first coyotes in the northern U.S., they raise pups (losing several), experience summer plenty, winter hardship, playfulness, and unmistakable love and grief. Blending science and imagination with magical results, this story tells how coyotes may have populated a land desperately in need of a keystone predator, and no one who reads it will doubt the value of their ecological role.