The Twenty-Ninth Day

Oh my Goodness! What a wonderful book! I was on the edge of my seat
through most of the book, going back to it quickly if I had to deal with something
around the house.
These guys were prepared, they did everything by the book for safety. Like
anything bad that can happen, it's just that one time of letting your guard down. The book
held my attention even without the grizzly attack. There was plenty of action in the
canoes fighting the weather!
I loved this book, as a Grandma. I think it would be even more fun to read
for someone that enjoys the outdoors, photography, camping, canoeing, hiking or
just Bears in general as I do. From a distance.
The writer explained everything in detail, I felt like I was experiencing everything
he went through. I did not want the book to end! This is one I must purchase and
buy as a gift for friends.

Thank you so much, NetGalley, the writer, and the Publisher for giving me the chance
to enjoy this book!

This book will give you chills like no other. The story is very intense so be ready for it. It really is a life and death struggle in the pages.

This book was very well written. Nice and easy to read and flowed well. Had me on the edge of my seat. Wondering which way it was going to go. Great mystery can’t beat it.

If you are looking for a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat, here it is! This book is very well written and makes you feel like you are there. This would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves the great outdoors! Thank you Blackstone Publishing via NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

The final camping trip in a multi year outdoor program is a 40 day wilderness canoe trek. Campers are helicoptered in and then are utterly alone with limited supplies. For 28 days things go wonderfully well. The young men, all seasoned outdoorsmen, alternately canoe and portage their boats through the pristine wilderness. Then, on the 29th day, Alex goes alone up on a ridge to take a few photographs. A grizzly appears. Alex waits -- waits for the grizzly to either leave or to charge and kill him. The bear does neither. He charges and throws Alex through the air, knocking him unconscious. When he awakens and tries to head back for camp, his leg is at first numb but weak and then progressively worse. The horrific compression injury inflicted by the bear and the boys' courageous attempt to complete their canoe adventure without outside aid is fascinating. An absolutely amazing book and one I would happily re-read.

This book was a slow starter but if you can get through all the technical canoeing terms (or if canoeing is your thing!) it might not be an issue. That being said once you are used to it, this is an excellent read. It really harkens back to the tales of old school adventurers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Any fans of nature or adventure tales, or even just readers of stories like A Walk in the Woods and Wild will enjoy this one. Throughout the book there are quiet glimpses into a wild frontier most of us will only dream of seeing. Its well written and the photographs are beautiful.

This was a very suspenseful and intriguing book as the reader knows at some point the author is going to get attacked by a bear. It is a fairly quick read & would recommend this to anyone who likes the outdoors/wilderness.

Wow, what an amazing story of survival in the deep tundra. This book is very descriptive of what happened to Alex on his journey. From the start you get sucked into this story and it is like you are there. You feel the anxiety growing and you know something is going to happen. One minus point because sometimes the technical terms for canoeing were a little too much for my taste but overall great read!

A detailed true story of a trip of a lifetime for a young 17 year old Alex Messenger. He travels for a canoe trip with a group of 6 friends leaving Minnesota for the rugged Arctic. From creepy guys in a helicopter, to issues with ice, insects and wildlife, it makes for quite a harrowing adventure. The main premise of the book is the bear attack and survival, but it takes a bit to get to that point. The build up of bear sightings, to an incident where they almost tangle with a couple of musk oxen, builds up the apprehension of the attack to come. The book has pictures of the trip, and it really is quite a wild and beautiful place. There were also a few times I chuckled, like the experience when they made cinnamon rolls, took a bit and realized they used allspice instead of cinnamon. The bear attack is quite detailed, and occurred in the 13th chapter. The book is set up into parts, with the first part being the trip experience, then the attack. The second part deals with the issues of his friends helping him and trying to get help, which is really difficult as you can image. The third part the boys have to travel and camp farther downstream to await a helicopter. Seeing caribou and other people help to keep up the adventure. A well written story and one I highly recommend. Must admit I would have liked more the emphasis on the trip and less on the bear for the story line, as it became a focus and seemed a long time coming. I did like the ending note about the bear, and will let you read that yourself. Good story on a trip and adventure of a lifetime.

This is a very intense read with a lot of detail about canoeing in just about every scenario there is, I learned a lot about this sport, including the fact I never want to do what they did in this book. The story was written at times making me feel like I was right there with them. I highly recommend this book if you love the outdoors, canoeing, white water rafting and back woods extreme camping.

This is an intriguing read about a group of adventurous young men who traversed miles of lakes on Ann epic journey. Over halfway through the journey, the author, was mauled by a grizzly. Sustaining a serious leg injury he had to be helicoptered out. The writing was authentic and it feels as if readers are taking the trip themselves. I would have liked to know the year is occurred, but Messenger didn't include that information. He was very fortunate to have not only have survived the attack, but also to have recovered as well as he did.

It’s hard to give a star rating to someone’s life story and experiences so I am not going to for the purpose of this blog. Sorry not sorry.

On websites that require me to give my star rating, I will give this book 4.5 stars (rounded up to 5) because:

At times I forgot that I was reading a nonfiction story because I was so engrossed by the events that he was reliving.

Alex Messenger does a great job with recounting his experiences and delivering them to us as readers in a way that is entertaining while still sticking to what truly happened.

I mean, this man SURVIVED a GRIZZLY BEAR attack in the wilderness. Like how can I rate that badly? And not only did he survive, but he was able to go home and live his life in a way to help others do what he loved to do.

I enjoyed seeing these 6 boys turn into men in one trip into the Canadian Tundra. I not only loved seeing how Alex survived but how his friends rose to the occasion and made due with what they had.

Those boys lost a canoe, ended up short on supplies, figured their way out of an ice filled lake, and helped their friend survive a terrible Grizzly Bear attack.

If you are looking for a book similar to the Revenant, then you will be disappointed. There is no one on one with a Grizzly for revenge. No alone in the wilderness to die without any aid. There is no drama.

If you are looking for an intense coming of age story that is true then you will be very pleased.

I personally love hiking, kayaking, camping, and being outdoors in general so I may be a bit bias, but this story made me feel for Alex and his friends. Being in these situations can be difficult and strenuous on relationships and they made it all look easy.

There were several moments when I had to think about what I would have done if I were in their shoes.

Alex, thank you so much for sharing your story. I hope it resonates with others as much as it has with me.

This was an amazing tale. I dont remember ever hearing about this on the news and it was wild to read about. Not only the fact that he survived a grizzle bear attack but then he didnt get evacuated until 7 days letter. The fact that it happened so long ago and was still written so vividly was awe inspiring. I didnt realize there was a glossary and got a little lost in the canoeing terms but the story was so gripping that it was easy to forgive. I wish there had been more at the end about the recovery but the epilogue seemed to wrap it up quickly

At seventeen, Alex Messenger was already an accomplished wilderness traveler. He had hiked and canoed through forests and mountains across the northern United States and into Canada, and so a forty-two-day expedition sounded like the perfect ending to the summer before his senior year of high school. And so he and five friends journeyed hundreds of miles from the nearest town to embark on a canoe trip that would test their wilderness skills to the limit. They were not quite alone, as a group of five young women were on a course parallel to theirs, but aside from a few brief meetings, Alex and his friends were alone. Everything was going fine for the first four weeks but on the twenty-ninth day, while Alex was exploring part of an island near their camp, he was attacked by a Grizzly bear. While he was fortunate to have survived the initial mauling, Alex and his friends had to make the most of their skills and supplies while pushing through the wilderness, while simultaneously aiding their gravely injured friend.

While wilderness adventure memoirs are a genre in their own right, few of the authors have a survival story as extreme as Messenger’s. How many of those who are mauled by Grizzly bears live to tell the tale? That Messenger did so– and that he kept his wits through the encounter– is a testament to his cool-headedness and survival training.

But The Twenty-Ninth Day is not entirely about the bear attack, which occurs near the halfway point. It is also a love letter to the wilderness and the story of young friends bonding in extreme circumstances. Messenger’s descriptions of the tundra flow with a sort of uncouth grace and his explanations of canoeing maneuvers would seem dry and unnecessary if he didn’t follow them up with descriptions of dangerous river passages and the threats posed by massive sheets of lake ice. What Messenger lacks in writing skill he more than makes up for in his passion for the subject.

“Finding the shells served as a reminder that even though we were bushwhacking, we were not the first people to walk this esker. We were guests here. The tundra of Nunavut had been home to the people who made that stone kayak stand, the man who fired those shells, and the countless others over the centuries. This ground held a history we barely understood, and secrets we would never know.”

On the day of the crisis, the titular twenty-ninth day, Messenger wakes up like it’s any other day and, finding that his friends have left camp to do some fishing, he decides to explore the area near their camp. Though it seems like a safe thing to do on an island in the middle of a deep river, Messenger soon has his fateful encounter with a Grizzly bear. Though he keeps a level head and does everything he was trained to do to ward off such an attack, the Grizzly bear charges him anyway. The description of the attack is riveting and filled with enough detail that one can almost hear the bear’s breathing and feel it striking Messenger.

In the wake of the attack Messenger– bleeding, disoriented, and afraid for his life– still keeps his wits about him and struggles back to camp where his friends find him and treat his injuries as well as they can while preparing to leave the island. The bear is still there, after all, and Messenger isn’t the only one afraid that it will come back.

What follows is an account of field medical treatment that is not for the faint of heart. Though they have packed extensive first aid kids, none of the young men are doctors, nor is the extent of Messenger’s injuries obvious at first. Because they are hundreds of miles from aid, they have to push on, with Messenger contributing as best he can while his condition slowly deteriorates.

Though The Twenty-Ninth Day is not the most polished of wilderness travel memoirs, it is memorable if only for the Grizzly bear attack. But what shines through the entirety of this story is Messenger’s boundless love for the wild places of the world. Though physically scarred by the mauling, he has refused to let it prevent him from returning to the forests he loves. The attention and passion he devotes to every part of his journey sets this book apart from many of its peers and makes it linger in the reader’s mind.





Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for providing me with a free eGalley in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion.

I have an acquaintance who was geocaching by himself on the eastern slopes of the Rockies in Alberta. He startled a grizzly and was attacked. He fought the bear and was able to walk out to safety, even with his injuries. As I read this story, I gained a little bit of understanding of what my friend went through.

Alex Messenger does a fine job of sharing the story of his 600 mile canoe trip through northern Canada. It’s a good read before the 29th day. And then of course there is the 29th day and the aftermath. The description of the attack was horrific. The description of attending to his wounds in the days that follow was not for the faint of heart.

Although this a story of young men on an adventure that goes bad, it is also a story of a man who loves the land he walks on, and respects the peoples who have walked on it before him. A good, easy read.

4.25 enthralled ★★★★✩
This book is for you if… a stunning cover, combined with an autobiographic survival story with lots of love for the wonders and weirdnesses of nature, wake your interest.

⤐ Overall.
Gut-wrenching doesn't even begin to describe what I've felt reading Alex's words. I think at some point I even experienced sympathy pains. The simplicity of Alex's story-telling bears an honesty to it that makes it hard for the reader not to be sucked into this book. He managed to portal me from my rainy home in Nürnberg to the Canadian tundra whenever I opened the book. It made it hard to put down and easy to come back, just what I look for in my reads.

⤐ What’s happening.
‘As my gaze snapped onto the horizon, the brown shape becomes instantly visible. It was not a musk ox. This was much worse.’

Alex and five of his friends set out for the adventure of a lifetime, paddling through the stunningly picturesque wilderness of Canada. What starts out to be a light survival trip changes drastically on their 29th day in the boat: Alex is mauled by a bear. Now the real fight to survive begins.
Con:
⇢ no rabies vaccine
⇢ grizzly bears are not the only threats nature holds
⇢ spending weeks weith the same 5 people is strenuous
Pro:
⇢ friends are expertly trained at treating injuries
⇢ landsacpe still mesmerising
⇢ nothing like getting bit by a bear to become friends for life

_____________________
Writing quality + easy of reading = 4*

pace = 4*

enjoyability = 4*

insightfulness = 4*

This book recounts the true story of the author's trip through the Canadian wilderness at 17. Alex Messenger spent summers and winter breaks trekking through the wilderness building up to this longest and most remote trek available from Camp Menogyn. 42 days of hiking, canoeing, portaging.....sleeping, eating and living in the wilderness with five other teens. 42 days of wild rivers, lakes, and forest. Fresh air and freedom. A 17 year old boy's dream. Until.....

......the grizzly bear.

I love adventure stories, especially those set in remote wilderness areas. This book was such an exciting and enjoyable read. It grabbed my attention immediately and held it throughout. I can't imagine what I would do if I was badly mauled by a grizzly bear far away from a hospital or any assistance other than a group of friends. These boys wanted an adventure....and they got much more than they bargained for. It definitely proves wilderness is beautiful....but also very dangerous and unpredictable.

This is an incredible story of strength in incredibly dangerous circumstances. Great book!

**I voluntarily read an advance review copy of this book from Blackstone Publishing via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

Thank you to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows the trip of a lifetime of Alex Messenger at the age of 17. A canoe trip that will take 40 days of travel through Canada's far north. Alex puts down his thoughts about the friends he is travelling with, the land they are crossing and the challenges they face on a daily basis. Their trip encounters a hitch when Alex is attacked by a bear on their 29th day in the middle of nowhere. They try to continue on to finish the trip until the extent of Alex's injuries call for him to be airlifted out to receive medical treatment.
The descriptive writing gives you a good feeling of travelling along with the group. It gives you an incite into a boy's journey that helps shape the man he will become.

What an intense thing to go through! The canoe trip, the bear attack, and all that went on afterwards.
The author's descriptions were very good. I could picture the scenes so clear.

While exploring remote areas as part of an educational project, a young man is attacked and mauled by a grizzly bear. The story builds background, giving us a sense of who these individuals are and how the attack will test their survival skills. With no good way to transport their injured, they must work together to make their way to the pick up point while avoiding any more dangers. I've been in areas such as described in this book and while beautiful, the rugged terrain and hidden dangers would test even the most experienced adventurer. An excellent book for anyone who has ever thought about setting off on a wilderness expedition.

An amazing memoir about a teenage boy surviving a bear attack while on a six hundred mile canoe trip in Canada. This coming of age story will bring you nightmares if you’re a parent of a teenager. The measures his group took, his state of mind and ability to seek safety while horribly, unimaginably wounded. Brilliantly written.