Wolf Brother

Wolf Brother is a novel for young readers by the English writer Michelle Paver, published in 2004. It is the first book of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.

The series is set in the forests of northern Europe about six thousand years ago, and Paver built the world out of archaeological evidence: the tools, clothing, shelters and hunting methods of the Stone Age, along with the beliefs about spirits and totems that the characters live by. Torak is a boy of twelve whose father is killed by a bear that behaves as though something else is inside it, and he is left with a promise to keep and a journey north to make. A wolf cub whose pack has been lost attaches itself to him, and the two of them travel together through a landscape in which the animals, the clans and the spirits all have their own claims. Paver writes the books in the present tense and keeps the survival detail practical rather than decorative.

The series ran to six novels and was followed by further books set in the same world, and Paver researched them by travelling to the landscapes she wrote about and living in them.