He also taught us that compassion was the most important thing we could learn. If someone hurt us, we needed only empathy, and forgiveness should be easy.
Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves
Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland on a mission to reintroduce wolves to the Highlands. With her is her twin sister Aggie, once vibrant but now silent and withdrawn after an abusive marriage. Farmers worry about the wolves preying on their livestock, while Inti tries to convince them the wolves prefer natural game.
When Inti discovers the bloody corpse of a man she has openly confronted because he beat his wife, a reminder to her of Aggie's husband, she hastily buries it, fearing her wolves will be blamed. But then she becomes a suspect in the man's disappearance, while she herself fears the murderer could be Duncan, the local police chief and also her lover and the father of the child she carries.
Adding to the complications, Inti suffers from mirror-touch synesthesia, a rare condition causing her to experience what those around her experience. If someone else is struck, she feels the blow. (This is a real condition, experienced by the novelist Siri Hustvedt, among others.)
McConaghy masterfully juggles all this and more, while giving her readers a bit of mirror-touch synesthesia that allows us to feel what her characters, especially Inti, are feeling. And then she shows us that wolves may experience this empathy, as well.
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