In a weaving of past and present and steeped in the landscapes and cultures of the Far North, The Bears of Winter is a story about the fallibility of memory and whether atonement is possible or necessary, especially within one’s own heart. Think, Where the Crawdads Sing meets Wild.
Eagle, Alaska, is an isolated and ramshackle place.
For 15-year-old Betheen Gardner, growing up there in the late 1970s, this suits her just fine. Aside from her half-Inupiat aunt Umi, who gifts her a bear tuungaq (talisman)—and whose only son dies when he falls through the ice—Beth has always aligned herself more with the cold and the wild places around her than with any of the other people who populate Eagle Valley.
That is, until Danny Hunter comes to town.
Soon to be the charismatic lead singer of a band called Sleeping Sadie, he sparks an awakening in their small community, especially in Beth. Through Danny, Beth learns to shed her former shell and enter a world of connection, creativity, and hope that she had never dreamed possible before. But this new dream is threatened as a darkness in Danny arises and slowly grows. Fearing the loss of all she has gained, Beth tells one small lie, unwittingly tipping the first domino, setting in motion a series of events that leave Beth brutally beaten, a 17-year-old boy dead, and Danny taken forever away.
Beth flees Alaska for Washington State and forms her stories of that tragic time around her beating, the necessary reconstruction of her face, and the subsequent years of struggle to rebuild her life.
Twenty years later, those stories still dog her, and 40-year-old Beth temporarily leaves her husband, Trey Hollis, and their home in Seattle to return to the frozen isolation of Eagle Valley. Once there, memories and stories collide, and a seed of fear grows in Beth as she faces the potential untruth of her former accusations against Danny and the possible depth of her complicity in the young boy’s death.
When Danny Hunter unexpectedly returns to Eagle, Beth’s deep remorse and insatiable desire for the truth draw her back into a world of unfinished and dangerous passions that threaten her painstakingly rebuilt life. Soon, the darkness in Danny resurfaces, forcing Beth to realize, perhaps too late, as she backs toward the cliff’s edge, that it is her stories, after all, that reveal the deepest truths. She must summon the strength of her tuungaq, the bear, that she forfeited so many years ago.
The Bears of Winter is at once a mystery, as we discover which young man in Beth’s past dies, and a rough coming-of-age story that seeps into adulthood.
*To avoid spoilers, I have not revealed endings in these synopses.