Born in a den underneath the cabin of Happy Jack Ryan and Bill Stevens, Zorra the fox spends her early days in the company of the two miners, and grows up as a close companion to their dog, Bum. Despite her association with men and dog, however, there is something in Zorra that yearns to be "a wild, free fox," and leads her out into the wider world of the surrounding Five Rivers Country. Here she encounters danger, particularly from the trapper Cartier - an enemy for whom her friendly relations with humans had not prepared her. Fortunately, her observation of Carcajou the wolverine teaches her an important lesson about how to avoid traps, while the return of her parents - Tricky and Vixen, who were introduced in Tricky: The Adventures of a Red Fox - leads to the continuation of her training in the real way of being a fox. The ties of youthful affection and loyalty always lead Zorra back to Bum, and to the miners, but the call of the wild lures her out again. In the end, when Zorra's life is threatened by Cartier's hunting dog Diablo, dependable old Bum proves himself a faithful friend to the young fox...

Originally published in 1957, this engaging animal story from George Cory Franklin is a sequel to his earlier Tricky: The Adventures of a Red Fox, which was published in 1949. Like its predecessor, Zorra: A Fox of the Mountains is set in the Five Rivers Country of Colorado, around the Gunnison River, where the author grew up. Interestingly, fellow children's author Rutherford George Montgomery, who wrote numerous animal stories, including one devoted to the adventures of a wolverine named Carcajou and his conflict with an Indian trapper, was also a resident of Gunnison County in the 1930s. There seems to be little biographical information available about Franklin, but his preface to Tricky makes it clear that he grew up and lived in the Five Rivers Country, making me wonder whether he was acquainted with Montgomery, and whether the brief appearance of Carcajou the wolverine in this story was a tribute to Montgomery's book, which was first published in 1936. Whatever the case may be, it's certainly interesting that these two authors lived in the same area for a time, wrote about the same kinds of animals, and were sometimes even illustrated by the same artist - L.D. Cram. As for Zorra, it was entertaining, although I continue to be troubled by the description of Cartier as a 'half-breed' trapper. The clear villain of the piece, his character is more fleshed out here than in Tricky, and the picture painted isn't flattering: Cartier's cabin is described as smelly and filthy (as opposed to the clean cabin of the two miners, Jack and Bill), and the man himself as someone who, "like many of his class," is brutal and indiscriminate in his killing. As with Tricky, provided that readers are aware of this potentially problematic aspect of the story, I would recommend Zorra to those readers interested in the depiction of foxes in children's literature, or in children's stories set in the Colorado Rockies, and to anyone who read and enjoyed Tricky. ( )