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The Watchers of the Trails

First published: 1904
Pages: 204

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About this book

Twenty-two stories fill this collection, each following a wild creature through the northern woods and waterways it calls home. A ram breaking free of its flock, a moose cow's call carrying through the woods, the small hunters of pool and open air: the animals are drawn from close field observation rather than fable, and Roberts refuses to soften their world with human sentiment. Published in 1904 as his second book of animal life, the collection helped define the realistic animal story, a form he pioneered alongside Ernest Thompson Seton, to whom the book is dedicated. What holds a reader is the patience of the watching. Roberts renders instinct, hunger, and the daily arithmetic of survival with a naturalist's exactness and a poet's ear, and the result reads as neither zoology lecture nor tidy moral tale.

About the author

Charles G. D. Roberts

Charles G. D. Roberts was a Canadian poet and prose writer especially associated with fiction about wild animals. Some Animal Stories gathers tales centered on creatures including panthers, ravens, porcupines, skunks, and a she-bear, presenting instinct and survival through closely observed narrative scenes.