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Claire Cameron's first novel, The Line Painter, was published in 2007 by HarperCollins Canada. It won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award for best first novel. Cameron's work has appeared in the New York Times, The Globe & Mail, and The Rumpus. She worked as a wilderness instructor in Algonquin Park and for Outward Bound. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.
The Bear
eBook
$12.99
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ISBN-13:
9780316230100
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
- Publication date: 02/11/2014
- Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 240
- Sales rank: 354,062
- File size: 1 MB
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A powerful suspense story narrated by a young girl who must fend for herself and her little brother after a brutal bear attack
While camping with her family on a remote island, five-year-old Anna awakes in the night to the sound of her mother screaming. A rogue black bear, three hundred pounds of fury, is attacking the family's campsite -- and pouncing on her parents as prey.
At her dying mother's faint urging, Anna manages to get her brother into the family's canoe and paddle away. But when the canoe runs aground on the edge of the woods, the sister and brother must battle hunger, the elements, and a wilderness alive with danger. Lost and completely alone, they find that their only hope resides in Anna's heartbreaking love for her family, and her struggle to be brave when nothing in her world seems safe anymore.
This is a story with a small narrator and a big heart. Cameron gracefully plumbs Anna's young perspective on family, responsibility, and hope, charting both a tragically premature loss of innocence and a startling evolution as Anna reasons through the impossible situations that confront her.
Lean and confident, and told in the innocent and honest voice of a five-year-old, THE BEAR is a transporting tale of loss -- but also a poignant and surprisingly funny adventure about love and the raw instincts that enable us to survive.
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Publishers Weekly
10/28/2013Inspired by a fatal 1991 bear attack on a couple camping on an island in Ontario's Algonquin Park, Cameron's novel of fear and survival recounts the fictional escape from a similar attack of five-year-old Anna and her two-year-old brother, Alex (nicknamed "Stick" for his sticky fingers). Anna's narrative begins midattack after her father has tossed her and her brother into the storage chest they call "Coleman." Squished in the darkness between Stick and her teddy bear, Anna sees a black furry animal through a crack, but all she can picture is her next-door neighbor's dog Snoopy. In daylight, she climbs out of Coleman to discover what remains of her father and to catch her mother's last words urging her to put her brother in the canoe and paddle away. What follows is a vividly portrayed wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, isolation) juxtaposed with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, hope), all seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not entirely understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere. Upping the emotional ante, Cameron shows the children's rescue, Anna's encounter in a hospital with a child psychologist, and, years later, her return to the island with Alex as adults. Intensity, as well as Anna's voice, make reading this book a challenging but ultimately uplifting experience. (Feb.)
Library Journal
★ 01/01/2014Drawing on a real-life tragedy that befell a couple in Ontario's Algonquin Park in the 1990s, Cameron tells the story of five-year-old Anna and her toddler brother, Stick, who narrowly escape a horrific bear attack that kills their mother and father. The concerns of the young narrator—being good, remaining brave when her parents and her teddy bear are gone, how annoying her brother is—are an engaging, focused lens through which to view events in the novel. Anna doesn't understand the death of her parents until much later. As Cameron points out, humans tend to look for mistakes made by the victims in such cases, because this makes us feel safe as long as we do not make those errors. Unfortunately, animals in the wild can be unpredictable. VERDICT This is a fast, compelling read for nature lovers, though it's not the book to take with you while camping if you plan to sleep at all. Cameron's first novel, The Line Painter, won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award. [See Prepub Alert, 8/12/13.]—Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Libs., Arlington, VA