Review: The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

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In The Last Ranger, Peter Heller crafts an adventure in Yellowstone National Park that blends an appreciation for wolves and bears with the complicated emotions and relationships that humans bring to every environment. Ren, a park enforcement ranger, grapples with a simmering anger toward oblivious tourists, rowdy campers, and more sinister actors, including a cunning poacher. To manage his job responsibilities and internal suffering, Ren leans on the kindnesses and thoughtfulness of locals within and just outside of the park. 

Ren’s relationship with Hilly, a renowned wolf biologist, is at the heart of the story. Her commitment to observing and understanding wolves urges her to push the limits, and sometimes cross them, when her pack is threatened. On a collision course with the poacher, Les Ingraham, Hilly and Ren fall into a cycle of violence that seems doomed for murder. Will Ren be able to check his rage and find resolutions, lawful or not, that balance justice and mercy? And will Ren find and sustain any solace for his gnawing heartache?

As in The Dog Stars, Heller’s breakout novel, the prose exudes deep admiration for the natural world. Heller’s exceptionally well-crafted descriptions of rivers and streams, mountains and valleys, and flora and fauna offer the reader as much joy and reward as any action-packed scene. Consider the excerpt below:

“Rich scents of wet earth, swollen creek water, rain-sweetened grass. Above him, mist spumed in tatters off the rocky cap of Druid Peak, and off the wet black cliffs farther north. The sky looked scrubbed. The few clouds splayed like empty linens blown off a line. The gusting rain had torn leaves from the aspen across the creek and flecked the ground with yellow like a flight of songbirds just landed. Maybe the simile occurred to him because he could hear the meadowlark trilling what sounded like a glad song, an after-rain song.”

The characters in The Last Ranger, from campground managers to bartenders and ranchers to gun-wielding globetrotters, lead full lives. Their authentic interactions enliven a believable world, one where complexity rather than simplicity convincingly characterizes its inhabitants.

Ultimately, Heller’s novel focuses on how we process permanent, seemingly-unbearable losses while existing in a world full of beauty as well as predator and prey. Early in the story, Ren wonders if he’s the last ranger that puts the animals first, previewing consequential decisions he will make in the days to come. When the guns are raised, and the stakes are as high as ever, Ren must decide: Who will he strike, and who will he spare?

With compelling prose, a cast of engaging characters, and a plot with life and death consequences, Peter Heller’s The Last Ranger is a worthy adventure tale with deceivingly-deep reflections on what it means to be human.

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