One Christmas Eve an emaciated deer stumbled across the yard of Helen Hoover's remote cabin in northern Minnesota. Barely surviving the brutal winter, gaunt from starvation, blind in one eye from a hunting wound, he became the central character in Hoover's popular book The Gift of the Deer. Hoover and her husband Adrian named this deer Peter, nursed him back to health, and observed Peter and his growing clan for four years. The Gift of the Deer, first published in 1966, sold over 50,000 copies and is Hoover's best-selling book. This paperback edition is beautifully illustrated by Adrian Hoover, and readers young and old will delight in this touching story of two north woods families.