The Last Catamount - by Mark Lavine (Paperback)

About the Book

A captivating wilderness story voiced by a lone catamount and accompanied by spectacular full color photographs makes for an unforgettable read.

Book Synopsis

Set deep in Vermont's Green Mountains, The Last Catamount is a story that blends wilderness adventure, local history, and a unique perspective on the interplay between instinct and an emerging sense of self-awareness in the minds of wild animals. The story is voiced by both main characters: a retired man pursuing the art of trail making, and a catamount mother desperate to feed her two starving cubs. Sharing the same patch of remote wilderness, the two dance around each other from a distance until forces beyond their control bring them together.

The story is accompanied by numerous color photographs that stunningly capture the beauty of wild Vermont.

Review Quotes

Publishers Weekly-BookLife:

Lavine's playful, gently challenging novel of man, nature, and animal intelligence braids the narratives of two quite different lives sharing a stretch of Vermont ski-country wilderness. First is retired trail-builder Jonathan Prester...then there is a starving female catamount, a big-cat species officially declared extinct in Vermont since 1881. The catamount serves as an occasional narrator while fighting to keep her two cubs alive, and these singular chapters prove Lavine's strongest material, a genuine feat of defamiliarization and imaginative power...

The ending boasts weight and power, and Lavine's mix of nature writing, mystery, and metafiction is unusual and ambitious, if potentially alienating. Still, this is original, moving, and thought-provoking.

Takeaway: Singular novel of Vermont nature, animal intelligence, and metafictional play.

Kirkus Reviews:

A trail in the woods becomes a path between the human and natural worlds in Lavine's philosophical novella...Readers will find much to enjoy in its parallel structure, which creates a meaningful conversation between human experience and the natural world, and the work's themes of community, ecology, and identity remain compelling.

An affecting novella with a creative use of narrative structure and a deep emphasis on ecological responsibility.

Midwest Review:

"...A brilliantly scripted and intriguing read from cover to cover, The Last Catamount is a carefully crafted novel that will hold a very special and enduring appeal to readers with an interest in stories involving the interplay and life experiences of sentient wildlife and humans..."