About the book
This classic adventure novel follows Buck, a pampered house dog living a comfortable life in California, who is suddenly kidnapped and sold into the harsh reality of the Klondike Gold Rush. Thrust into the brutal, unforgiving wilderness of the North, he must adapt to survive as a sled dog, discovering the primal instincts that lie dormant within him.
The opening
Chapter I. Into the Primitive
“Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom’s chain; Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain.”
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself,
but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal,
and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland.
These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil,
and furry coats to protect them from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
Judge Miller’s place, it was called.
It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees,
through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.
The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars.
At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front.
There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages,
an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.
Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank
where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.
And over this great demesne Buck ruled.
Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life.