The hero of The Call of the Wild by Jack London is a large St. Bernard-Scotch Collie named Buck, who is stolen from his home in California and shipped first to Seattle, then to the Klondike region of Canada.  He learns to survive the cold winter nights and the vagaries of the pack society of dogs, at one point battling to the death with a rival dog named Spitz. He suffers a series of abusive and inept owners before being adopted by an experienced outdoorsman named John Thornton. The two become devoted and inseparable, with Buck saving Thornton from drowning, winning tests of strength and courage, and eventually avenging Thornton’s death at the hands of natives. Told in the simplest manner, the tale combines a chronicle of a reversion to the primitive struggle of the survival of the fittest with a theme of love and redemption.

The story is set in the Klondike during the Gold Rush of the 1890’s and was enormously popular when it was released in 1903, first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and then in book form a month later.  It has been adapted for the screen several times: as a silent film in 1923, as a talkie featuring Clark Gable and Loretta Young in 1935, and again in 1972 featuring Charlton Heston.

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