The Bear

The Bear is a novel by Claire Cameron, published in 2014. It is told from beginning to end in the voice of five-year-old Anna, and almost everything the reader learns about what has happened comes through her.

On a remote island where the family is camping, Anna wakes in the night to the sound of her mother screaming, and finds that a black bear is attacking the campsite and pouncing on her parents as prey. Her mother, dying, urges her to get away, and Anna manages to put her little brother into the family's canoe and paddle off with him into the dark.

The canoe comes ashore at the edge of the woods with the two children in it, and from there the book is the work of two small people trying to find food and shelter in country that will not help them. They have hunger, the weather and the wilderness to deal with, and Anna has her love for the family she has lost to keep her going.