The synopsis of How to Survive A Bear Attack by Claire Cameron grabbed and gripped me very hard as I have experience with bears in the wild and always yearn to learn more about these oft-misunderstood and mysterious creatures. After reading the book I turned to my husband and said, "Now THAT was a wow book!" The book is poignant, sad, uplifting, and hopeful along with a thread of mystery running through it, the mystery of why a healthy black bear predated an unsuspecting couple (Carola and Ray) and cached their bodies in Algonquin Park in Canada. No one knows the precise true story of what happened on that dreadful day but Cameron pieces it together along with official reports including the necroscopy, investigators and her personal knowledge and experience. In doing so, the bear becomes a character using the knowns such as his age, his health, bear behavior, torpor, and habits, how and what they eat and hunt. How fascinating to see things from his eyes, hear things from his ears, learn his stomach and gain knowledge on the power of his paws on a typical day in his life, leading up to the attack, and after. Real clues from the scene showed an unopened pack of raw hamburger, tracks, a broken oar, eyeglasses, and drag marks. What the couple went through is incomprehensible.

Interwoven throughout the narrative are pieces of Cameron's life and parallels between her and the bear story. When she was a young girl her dad died of a rare genetic mutation which became cancer. She is now living with that same rare cancer and as such must avoid UV light which is ironic and extremely challenging as an outdoorswoman. A few years after her dad's death she found healing in Algonquin Park, which gives so much yet takes away. Goosebumps appeared on my arms several times as my own dad died of a cancer when I was a young girl and I found nature (or it found me) and that is where I spend much of my time.

The more I ruminate on this book, the more strongly I feel about it and the topic of predatory bear attacks and how bears behave. It truly is amazing that we co-exist with them when they are capable of breaking a moose's back in one swipe and we have no natural protection such as teeth or antlers. But we do have bear spray which is proven to have a high success rate under the right conditions which isn't always the case. Bears are highly instinctual and intelligent, more than we will ever know. Sadly, sometimes humans and bears are at the wrong place at the wrong time.

A thoroughly compelling, informative and heart crushing book. It was clever, beautiful, moving and hopeful, considering the tragic and irreplaceable loss of human life, cancer attacks and bear attacks.

Thank you to Net Galley and Knopf publishing for the advance copy of How To Survive.A Bear Attack.
This is an excellent book. Another book that I’d give a 4.5 but will bump up for my score. Short and easy to read, but with so many layers. The author uses a unique perspective in this writing as its part memoir, part non fiction, part historical fiction, part fiction.
I am not sure if I love her connections to her battle with cancer but it does work in connection with this story.
They could piece together the information from the island to reasonably recreate the events, but they cannot be fully sure of how the attack played out. What was really unique was her fictional part……the bear’s perspective. I found myself looking forward to the next part of the book that highlighted the travels of the bear. In doing this the author created the bear as a character with the full character development present in most fictional tales.
This book was hard to put down, tragic, sad and informative.