The Knowing One Author:Eunice Young Smith "Even as a sightless cub groping with her brothers about the burrow, Songkeena, the little red fox, knew terror and uncertainty. The gun exploding in the nest was the first of many trials she had to face. Yet to come were the pain of loneliness, the knowledge of the trap hidden in the snow, the panting exhaustion of the chase. — "But experience... more » soon teaches Songkeena that safety and nourishment itself belong only to the cunning and the swift. And there is also enjoyment to be found in the calculated enticement of a farmer's chained dog, exultation in the challenge of the hunt, peace in the summer sun, fulfillment in the love she has for Nuroo, her bungling mate, and ecstasy in eventual motherhood.
"In her account of the brave little fox, Eunice Young Smith does not attempt to hide the truth, but her picture of the cruel, uncompromising existence of the wild ones evokes as well the lyric beauty of the woodland year, its voluptuousness, its teeming life. She has unerringly combined all these ingredients in a life-cycle story of touching magnitude."« less