Book Review - "The Last Ranger" by Peter Heller

"The Last Ranger," published originally in 2023, was written by Denver resident Peter Heller, an adventure-seeking outdoorsman who has established his bonafides in traveling the world as an expedition kayaker.

Heller's adventures have become fodder for his tales of the challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucasus, Central America and Peru. He was on the ground team of purportedly the most ambitious whitewater expedition that wound through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. This gorge is three times as deep as the Grand Canyon, and the supposed inspiration for James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" Shangri La tale, where tigers and leopards roam its depths below 25,000 foot peaks.

On assignment for National Geographic, Heller joined the crew of a radical environmental group which sailed to Antarctica to stymie Japanese whaling. He was part of a team that documented the slaughtering of pilot whales in a guarded cove in Taiji, Japan.

Heller picked up a surfboard and apprenticed himself to local master-boarders to discover whether, in six months, he could surf the big fast wave.

From these well-springs of adventure, "The Last Ranger" draws the reader into a tale of mystery and adventure set in Yellowstone National Park that pits complicated human characters into tense struggles amongst each other and the animals that inhabit the area. Ultimately the growing tension rises to the level of life and death.

Many threads run through the story that encompass Ren, the park ranger, who is processing tragic loss, Hilly, the biologist whose focus and mission is the protection of gray wolves, and Len, an avid hunter whose priorities may conflict with the other two.

Heller's power of observation and description draw the reader immediately into the scene. His love of words demands the reader's attention. His vocabulary rises above the normal fodder but the result is an enriched understanding of both character and scene in which the action occurs.

The culmination of the story, after the climax of action and the reveal of the mystery, is artfully presented as a re-weaving of all the strands of the storyline into the one denouement that can provide some resolution for everyone, if not complete satisfaction for all readers.

At a time when wolves are being reintroduced into Northern Colorado under a cloud of some turmoil and disagreement, "The Last Ranger" is a tale that is current with lessons that are definitely of interest as written by a Denver author. If not providing an ultimate solution, at the very least, this tale may bring some illumination to the very complex challenge we have as humans to respect wildlife and allow it to flourish within the near spaces we inhabit.