The Call of the Wild

Buck is a large, comfortable dog living on a wealthy ranch in California's Santa Clara Valley in 1897. His peaceful life ends abruptly when a gardener steals him and sells him to traders supplying the Klondike Gold Rush. Buck is shipped north, beaten with a club into submission, and thrown into the world of Arctic sled dogs.

In the snow of the Yukon, Buck learns hard, fast lessons. He learns to steal food, to sleep buried in snow, to pull a sled, and to fight. He clashes with Spitz, the cruel lead dog, and eventually kills him in a savage duel, taking his place at the head of the team. Buck passes through several owners, working brutally hard delivering mail across the frozen north.

Then he is sold to three inexperienced and foolish gold-seekers — Hal, Charles, and Mercedes — who load the sled wrong, drive the dogs cruelly, and ignore every warning. Most of the team dies of hunger and exhaustion. When the family tries to cross a thawing river, a kind man named John Thornton stops them and refuses to let Buck go with them. The family pushes on; the ice breaks; they drown.

Buck recovers and gives John Thornton his whole heart. He saves Thornton's life, wins a famous bet by pulling a thousand-pound sled, and follows Thornton into the deep wilderness in search of a lost gold mine. There, alone in the forest, Buck begins to hear a wild call — the call of his wolf ancestors. He starts to disappear for days at a time, hunting with wolves. When he returns one day to find Thornton and the others killed by a group of native men, the last tie to civilization is cut. Buck takes revenge, then runs free with a wolf pack, becoming a legend of the northern forests.