This is the story of Barry and Lupus. Barry, an exhausted newspaper owner physically and economically on the ropes, meets Lupus, a wolf-German Shepherd cross, at an animal shelter. Despite a nagging belief that he cannot take responsibility for anything or anyone else, Barry rescues Lupus and takes him home. Every Wolf’s Howl recounts their incredible three-year journey together, back and forth across the country, enduring poverty, heartache, and illness. Beginning at the tail end of Barry and Lupus’s story and looping back in time, this memoir presents a moving portrait of economic struggle and an intimate glimpse into an extraordinary friendship. Lupus’s inner wolf never completely submits to domestication: he heels only when he chooses to. Barry witnesses something determinedly natural, untamed, and fierce within Lupus. Something admirable. Something he can learn from.

Barry Grills was born in Belleville, Ontario, where he began his writing career as a journalist at The Intelligencer when he was eighteen. He has been publishing short fiction in Canada since 1973, and his stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, including Quarry, Grain, and the University of Windsor Review, as well as various anthologies, including Best Canadian Stories. He is also the author of three cultural biographies from Quarry Press on the lives of Anne Murray, Alanis Morissette, and Celine Dion, as well as an updated Celine Dion biography, co-authored with Jim Brown. He is a past chair of The Writersâ?? Union of Canada and the Book and Periodical Council, and he has been both a federal election candidate and a municipal councillor. He currently lives in North Bay.

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"Every Wolf's Howl is more than the story of a man and his dog; it is a poignant, exuberant, exhilerating journey from failure to freedom, one that celebrates the human need for wildness and the courage to live an authentic life."

Merilyn Simonds

'Every Wolf's Howl': triumph over poverty

by Jennifer Rouse Barbeau