The Last Ranger

March 1, 2023

This latest from the nationally best-selling Heller (The River) is set in Yellowstone National Park, where enforcement ranger Ren Hopper encounters a local poacher chasing a small black bear. The situation escalates to shattered windshields, red-ribboned animal traps, and finally conspiracy, highlighting tensions between rich tourists and the local town's struggling residents. Prepub Alert.

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June 19, 2023
Heller (The Guide) offers an immersive story of a dedicated Yellowstone park ranger and the threats he faces down. Ren Hopper spends his days policing poachers and saving families from animal attacks. In his spare time, he likes to read Russian fiction and hang out with Hilly, a biologist who is studying the wolf packs that inhabit the park. One day, he finds Hilly caught in a leg trap and rescues her. Suspicion for setting the trap falls on alleged poacher Les Ingraham. Ren investigates Les’s background and finds he is peripherally connected to the Pathfinders, a militia of wealthy ranchers whose ultimate goal is to take over government land for their own financial gain, but local police refuse to follow up on his discoveries. As Ren and Hilly become romantically entwined, he finds more traps, which he takes to be veiled threats from Les. Though the plot is fairly thin, Heller compensates with strong characterizations, a vivid sense of place, enough wolf lore to fill several NatGeo specials, and a Boy Scout Handbook’s worth of wood-crafting tips. Fans of fiction about the outdoors are well served.

July 1, 2023
The rugged nature of Yellowstone permeates every page of the latest outdoors adventure from Heller (The Guide, 2021), a tale populated with lyrically defined characters. Some seem to have stepped out of Louis L'Amour's books. Then there are the rangers, the poachers, the resolute wildlife watchers, the tourists, the many who live in the region hoping to just hold on or trying to put their lives back together. The Pathfinders is a radical group that wants to undo the government's park policies for millions of acres they feel they could better manage, that is, exploit. Meanwhile, readers experience enforcement ranger Ren Hopper's entire harrowing life through his torturous memories. At this point, he is just hoping to be able to function. When his closest friend is mangled in a bear trap, Ren's investigation takes him in some surprising directions, creating a path by which he puts his life back together. This is wilderness noir at its best, a novel that will please fans of C. J. Box, Craig Johnson, and the legions of admirers of the television series, Yellowstone.

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July 15, 2023
Challenging times for a ranger in Yellowstone National Park. Heller draws on an extensive background in adventurous outdoor pursuits and a literary pedigree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop to produce this fast-paced, elegantly written slice of the often busy, sometimes-perilous life of a contemporary Yellowstone National Park ranger. As he portrays it, typical duties in the life of ranger Ren Hopper, who lives alone in a rustic cabin in the park, can include everything from arresting an intoxicated driver for striking a bison to saving a heedless family from a dangerously close encounter with a protective mother moose. But at the heart of the story is Ren's attempt to track down the human predator who's been poaching the park's wild wolf population, which had been eradicated for more than seven decades in the 20th century and restored only after deliberate effort. Ren's pursuit takes on even greater urgency when his friend Hilly, a famed wolf biologist, nearly loses her life after she's caught in a trap that appears to have been placed solely for the purpose of ensnaring her. The prime suspect is Les Ingraham, a local resident embittered after his shot at a professional football career is derailed by injury, but Ren can't rule out the possibility that a secretive militialike group that's hostile to restrictions against hunting on federal land may be involved. Along with evocative descriptions of Yellowstone's stunning beauty, Heller efficiently creates a small cast of fully realized characters, most notably Ren, who's still struggling with grief over the death of a mother who introduced him to the natural world before abandoning her family. But as the author displays in a thrilling climactic chase scene, he doesn't neglect his obligation to bring what at heart is a nature adventure story to a satisfying conclusion. Life and death in nature are close companions in a fast-moving and lyrical story.

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