Bear's Embrace

Can$21.95
1-55054-875-1

Author-Patricia Van Tighem

This is a candid, moving and beautifully written account of her survival and recovery. The Bear’s Embrace is a story of love and rage, of bravery and terror, of what it means to look different in a culture that values perfection. Above all, it is a celebration of life in all its many complexities.

On a sunny fall day in 1983, Patricia Van Tighem and her husband, Trevor, set out on a weekend trip to Alberta's Waterton Lakes National Park. It was a welcome break from their jobs as nurse and medical intern at a Calgary hospital, and their spirits were high. They hiked to the top of Crypt Lake, a 2000-foot climb, then camped overnight at the top. But the following morning as they began their descent through freshly fallen snow, something happened that would change their lives forever: they crossed paths with a grizzly bear.

The Bear's Embrace is a candid, moving and beautifully written account of survival and recovery. Although grizzly attacks on humans are rare, they are often fatal, and Van Tighem's reconstruction of the attack itself is vivid and disturbing. But equally vivid is her depiction of the complicated process of putting her life back together. The attack leaves her with permanent facial disfigurement, making her re-entry into the world sometimes as painful as the reconstructive surgery she undergoes. But over time Van Tighem comes to embrace the hard-won knowledge her experiences bring, and she details the road back to equilibrium with perception, humour and literary skill rare in a first-time writer. This is a story of love and rage, of bravery and terror, of what it means to look different in a culture that values perfection. In the spirit of Bonnie Shert Klein's Slow Dance and Lucy Greal's Autobiography of a Face, it is above all a celebration of life in all its complexities.

5.25x7.5, 288 pages, softcover

 

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