Winter Wolves

Wescott dares to venture into Stephen King territory and pulls off an impressive first novel. Fran Thomas, recovering from a divorce and journalist's burnout, is back in his hometown of Riverston, Maine, and putting a career back together on the Riverston Republic. Given a story about the death of the town drunk on the wintry seaside ice in neighboring Steel Harbor, Fran is told that the official verdict is heart failure, but an island-dwelling hermit says the body was attacked by a wolf pack. Wolves, however, are supposedly nonexistent in Maine. Fran is especially interested because he's had a dream in which aa man was attacked by a wolf. . Then Fran discovers that he's descended from the organizer of an 1820 massacre of wolves on the Channel Islands. As his dreams continue, Fran falls in love with the outwardly reserved Caroline Parker, the hermit's niece. Meanwhile, a scientist investigating the possibility of the wolves' existence dies mysteriously on the island and her boyfriend has a ""dream'' of his own. This engrossing mixture of the mundane (the beauty of a Maine winter) and the inexplicable (the scientist's final photos of nothing) leads to the chilling climax with Fran and Caroline. The end is shown but, nicely, not explained. Wescott should be watched. (March)