“Wolfish” is by Erica Berry.

Forty-five years after the publication of Barry Lopez’s seminal work, “Of Wolves and Men,” a young Oregon writer is giving new consideration to wolves, but from a female perspective.

When Lopez wrote his book, wolves had been eradicated from Oregon and Washington for decades. In the 1970s, there were so few gray wolves remaining anywhere in the United States they were listed as endangered under the newly-minted Endangered Species Act.

A wolf recovery team was tasked with devising a plan for reintroducing wolves into the American West. The idea faced significant opposition from ranchers – as well as from a general public whose closest acquaintance with wolves had been via the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

It took more than two decades of negotiations with, and education of, a wary public before a plan was implemented to capture wolves in Canada and release them into Yellowstone National Park and the Idaho wilderness.

In 1999, the first wolf to set foot in Oregon in nearly 50 years emerged from Hells Canyon on the Oregon side of the Snake River, in search of a mate and new territory. “B-45” had been the 45th wolf to be radio-collared by Idaho Department of Fish and Wildlife personnel. But their flustered counterparts at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife had no wolf management plan in place, so their solution was to track the wolf down, capture her, crate her up and fly her back to Idaho.

Erica Berry was just a kid in a Portland grade school at the time, unaware of the kerfuffle around B-45. But that wolf and other wolves, individually and collectively, now figure into her debut book, “Wolfish.”

Berry’s inquiry is as sprawling and ambitious as the journey of OR-7, a wolf whose journey she traces. Born in 2009 into a pack that successfully established itself in northeastern Oregon, OR-7 was radio-collared two years later by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists who, by that point, had developed a plan to understand the dispersal of wolves and their successful repopulation of wilderness areas.

With OR-7, they hit the jackpot. When he left his natal home, OR-7 was the first wolf of his generation to roam into western Oregon, and then into northern California, and then back into southern Oregon where he finally found a mate and established his own territory in the vicinity of Crater Lake.

Berry, too, wanders far afield – to Maine for college, Minnesota for grad school and to Europe for experience and work.

All along the way she investigates landscapes of apprehension – what it must be like for wolves, and what it is like for human females. “Wolfish” is a fascinating investigation into the concepts of predators and prey, fear and folktales, vulnerability and violence and gender.

Some of this is tough territory to navigate, much less read about – but Berry’s voracious curiosity and insightful prose will captivate the reader in the way a wolf’s gaze can enthrall. Little Red’s venturesome nature has been validated. Females will continue to set forth into the unknown.

This week’s book

“Wolfish” by Erica Berry

Flatiron Books — 432 pp — $29.99