Truth is stranger than fiction.

Here's the basics slightly edited: Late one June night in 2011, a large animal collides with an SUV cruising down Connecticut's scenic Merritt Parkway. The creature appears as something out of New England's forgotten past. Beside the road lay a 140-pound mountain lion.

Stolzenburg traces the mountain lion's 1,000 trek from the Black Hills of South Dakota along with the history of hunting/protecting this majestic creature, that seems to have a history of avoiding humans, not killing them.

Made me think of two Disney classics: The Incredible Journey, where two dogs and a cat get separated from their family and find their way home, and Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar. Sad ending. ( )

I'm from the East Coast where we don't have big cats, at least not for 100s of years. Heart of a Lion upturned everything I knew about mountain lions (cougars). I thought they were a deadly menace. They are not. More people are killed by porcupines. They have been persecuted nearly to the point of extinction based on primal fears. Like other top predators they have an important place, culling herds of deer and allowing forests and wetlands to reach full potential. The book does not sugar coat the occasional attack, they have happened, but it is rare and with special circumstances. Such is life alongside wild animals, given the alternative I'll take it.

The book is particularly brutal on those western states that have no-tolerance laws seeking to eliminate the cougar entirely. Stunning that what identifies the west, bravery and fortitude, like in South Dakota which is a sort of nursing ground for cougars, elected officials have become ignorant pansies, ignoring experts, ignoring science, appealing to the worst and darkest fears. The cougar is struggling to survive, but the laws around this amazing animal need to change. May it one day find a foothold in the East again, if the South Dakotans and every mid-west state in between would stop shooting for a bit, they will migrate across. But the shooting gallery won't let them through, trapping them in trees with dogs, running them aground with officials unloading 100s of rounds in a spasm of fear and excitement. In California they get by just fine, they are protected with very few problems. Treat them well and amazingly they do the same in return. ( )

This is superbly written, journalistic style non-fiction, rendering a mountain lion's journey from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Connecticut coast, but that's only the glue that holds this exceptional work together. Avoiding sensationalistic and preachy writing, this book is an engrossing, fully researched, well-balanced presentation of facts, complemented with juxtaposition of perspectives relative to predators. In other words, beyond immersive reading, this book has the potential to broaden understanding.

Oh, he details the ill-fated adventures of big cats and other predators, and addresses the reasons why they undertake such journeys, but additionally he shows rare insight into the minds of their adversaries such as:

" From the first teetering steps to the inimitable cocky stride in humanity’s six-million-year journey— from tree-dwelling, knuckle-walking offshoot of an African ape, to bipedal globe-trotting pedestrian of the world— had come uncounted sidetracks and detours through the bellies of big cats. Being hunted was a fact of early life that forever shaped the growing brains and bodies of the people who would come to be."

And their supporters such as:

" Whether eastward from the Rockies or northward from the Florida swamps, the exiled eastern cougar would need help coming home. The rewilders’ pleas for civility and compassion obviously weren’t cutting it. But their cause had lately embraced yet a more ecological rationale for why the East so needed its big cat back.

The murmur had been gathering from field sites and conference halls, formally surfacing in academic journals and publicized in mainstream media. Researchers from around the world were returning with disquieting reports of forests dying, coral reefs collapsing, pests and plagues irrupting. Beyond the bulldozers and the polluters and the usual cast of suspects, a more insidious factor had entered the equation. It was becoming ever more apparent that the extermination of the earth’s apex predators— the lions and wolves of the land, the great sharks and big fish of the sea, all so vehemently swept aside in humanity’s global swarming— had triggered a cascade of ecological consequences. Where the predators no longer hunted, their prey had run amok, amassing at freakish densities, crowding out competing species, denuding landscapes and seascapes as they went."

This together with chronicled transitions in thinking by involved individuals, exemplifies the potential of critical thinking. One example being Aldo Leopold's journey from advocating well managed stark forestlands, to recognizing the vibrancy and greater productivity of forestlands with a naturally occurring full complement of biodiversity.

This isn't a book a thoughtful person will soon forget. With the breadth of reasoning it encompasses, the reader will find themselves wondering how human potential will play out in a setting of self-destructive proclivities.

In our haste to overcome Nature have we gone too far, or is this simply evolving ecology? The author makes a fair case for both, leaving the reader to exercise critical thinking.

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” ~ Edwin Schlossberg ( )

This is a gorgeously written, factually tracked account of a male mountain lion's journey from the Black Hills to the coast of Connecticut - based in accurate science, with parallel accounts of other cats' journeys in their attempts to disperse and re-colonize their former range. It traces human attitudes towards big cats, both back in American history, and beyond, and clearly illuminates the insane degree of fear mongering that so often, still does, influence our perception and shapes our wildlife policies regarding re-wilding apex predatators.

I was impressed by the accuracy of the science, given I have followed this species' plight as a long time resident of Florida. The fact that the state of California has banned the hunting of these magnificent animals, and uses tranquillizers and not bullets, to remove them from populated areas - and the existence of the cougar living in Griffith Park in LA, this book is a clear call for the redefinition of policy concerning our only native big cat.

The story is beautifully told, clearly written, and cited with proper scholarship. An incredible journey and a call for more enlightened and compassionate policy. Highly recommended!