The Bear

October 28, 2013
Inspired 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.

November 15, 2013
In Cameron's second novel (The Line Painter, 2011), a 5-year-old girl relates her struggle for survival after a bear kills her parents while they're camping on Bates Island in Canada's Algonquin Park. Any contemporary writer depicting extreme events through the eyes of a child must contend with the formidable precedent of Emma Donoghue's Room (2010), and Cameron bears the comparison fairly well. In contrast to Donoghue's multilayered portrait of adaptation and resistance, Cameron crafts a more straightforward adventure with a narration that nicely captures an ordinary child's way of thinking--and of blocking out unwelcome knowledge. In the slam-bang opening, Anna Whyte wakes in the tent she shares with her 2-year-old brother, Stick, to hear their mother yelling. Their father rips open the tent and hustles the children into the animal-proof chest where they keep their food. A big "black dog" sniffs around the closed chest but can't get in; some time later, Anna emerges to find her father's severed foot in a shoe and her dying mother on the ground, urging her to "[g]et into the canoe and paddle away." Anna lures Stick into the canoe with cookies, and they manage to float across to the park mainland. They have no food or water; their pajamas are soaked; at one particularly scary moment, Anna spots the bear at the island's shore sniffing the air for their scent. Her guileless account shows her trying to be brave and take care of Stick, even though "I am not old enough to be a babysitter." One darkly funny scene shows Anna acting like a typical older sibling as she keeps all the berries for herself, until finally prompted to share with Stick by the vague understanding that this time, food is a matter of life and death. Anna's recovery is rather sketchily developed in the post-rescue scenes, but a touching epilogue 20 years after the ordeal brings home just how traumatized she was yet suggests that she can achieve some sort of closure. Harrowing but ultimately hopeful.

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December 15, 2013
When a young couple in Canada's Algonquin Park gets mauled and partially eaten by a black bear in 1991, it's a tragedy. When Cameron, who once worked at the park, researches and decides to write about this true story but adds the kids, it's a novel. In The Bear, the protagonist is a five-year-old girl, Anna, who must, after her parents are attacked, save herself and the life of her two-year-old brother, Stick, by canoeing to the mainland and surviving days in the wildernessa harrowing time she shares with the reader in a sort of youngster stream of consciousness: If I threw a ball into the water he would not jump off a dock just wag wag wag. There's touchingly voiced courageousness here and, with her sibling, talk of poo as well as the occasional, implausible preschooler sentiment: I need a fire inside my bones. From the conception to the execution, the book is an exploration of anguish from a child's point of view, shaded and shaped by Cameron (The Line Painter, 2007).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2013

Lots of heartfelt in-house chatter about this second novel by Cameron, whose first novel, The Line Painter, won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service. When five-year-old Anna is on a camping trip with her family, a furious black bear attacks their camp, killing her parents. Now she is responsible for getting her little brother to safety.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2014

Drawing 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

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2014

Drawing 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

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.