The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant 

As soon as I read the prologue of “The Tiger”, I knew that I was in for a literary treat. I could almost hear the snow crunch under the feet of the unwitting trapper and I could almost feel the overwhelming cold of the sub-zero air as he and his dog made their weary approach to his compound where a focused, dangerous tiger is waiting in the darkness. The author uses the tale of this unfortunate trapper (attacked, killed, and eaten) and the search for the tiger - as well as an explanation for the killing – to explore the plight of these magnificent creatures while providing a well-researched overview of the region’s history and its threatened environment.
The volume is beautifully written, dramatic and very informative. The story is told from three primary perspectives – Vladimir Markov, the poacher who is killed by the tiger at the book’s beginning; Yuri Trush, the tracker who seeks the dangerous tiger to unravel the mystery and prevent other deaths, and the tiger himself. While a heavily armed expedition seeks to find and stop the tiger, John Vaillant explores the inner life the tiger so that we can understand events from its wild perspective. As he relates the story, Vaillant paints an unforgettable picture of a beautiful and mysterious region – the last habitat of the largest tigers on our planet.
John Vaillant has done a magnificent job of research to tell this tale from so many perspectives and a similarly amazing job of earning the trust of those who know the region and its tigers best. As the storyline progresses, the author also shares the region’s historic and political legacy as it relates to the Primorye forest so vital to the threatened Amur tigers. Truly, the tiger’s existence in the forest is woven far into the very culture as natives have worshipped and coexisted with these dangerous beasts for centuries - even routinely sharing their kills. However, Russian settlers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought hunters and soldiers who targeted the magnificent tigers for mass killing and greatly diminished their number. Now, many who live near poverty in the Primorye region have turned to hunting and poaching simply to survive, further endangering the tiger’s future.
Jon Vaillant’s exquisite language and the fascinating tale of the Amur tigers in the Russian Far East kept me spellbound throughout this volume. “The Tiger” is a fascinating read and a compelling environmental lesson.
Author John Vaillant’s first book is “The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed”, which uses the story of a magnificent golden tree in the Queen Charlotte Islands to share the story of the native Haida people and their struggle against the white man’s plunder of natural resources in the Northwest. John has a “particular interest… [in] stories that explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world.”