The Bear

A gorgeous fable of Earth's last two human inhabitants, and a girl's journey home.

In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.

A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion.

“Select Praise for Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn , and The Signal Flame "A writer of rare and powerful elegance." -- Mary Doria Russell "[Krivak''s] sentences accrue and swell and ultimately break over a reader like water: they are that supple and bracing and shining." -- Leah Hager Cohen "A writer seemingly destined for great things." -- Richard Russo "Some writers are good at drawing a literary curtain over reality, and then there are writers who raise the veil and lead us to see for the first time. Krivak belongs to the latter." -- National Book Award judges'' citation "Krivak is an extraordinarily elegant writer, with a deep awareness of the natural world." New York Times Book Review "Krivak has his own voice, given to lyrical observations on the nature of human existence." -- Kirkus Reviews "One of the marks of great fiction is how intensely a reader is pulled into [a writer''s] world, becoming an observer of the drama almost as if he or she were part of the narrative. The Sojourn is one of those great books. And so is The Signal Flame . . . . [Krivak] bring[s] out the vast compassion, humanity and love of his rich, fully developed characters, who, in the end, have limited control of their lives, just like the rest of us." -- Star Tribune On The Sojourn "Intimate and keenly observed, [ The Sojourn ] is a war story, love story, and coming of age novel all rolled into one. I thought of Lermontov and Stendhal, Joseph Roth and Cormac McCarthy as I read. But make no mistake. Krivak''s voice and sense of drama are entirely his own." -- Sebastian Smee , Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic "A story that celebrates, in its stripped down but resonant fashion, the flow between creation and destruction we all call life." -- Dayton Literary Peace Prize judges'' citation "A novel of uncommon lyricism and moral ambiguity that balances the spare with the expansive." -- Chautauqua Prize committee citation "A gripping and harrowing war story that has the feel of a classic." -- NPR.org "Year''s Top Book Club Picks" citation "Splendid. . . . A novel for anyone who has a sharp eye and ear for life." -- NPR All Things Considered "[A] powerful, assured first novel. . . . If the early pages of The Sojourn sometimes recall Cormac McCarthy (especially The Crossing ), the heart of the book is a harrowing portrait of men at war, as powerful as Ernst Junger''s classic Storm of Steel and Isaac Babel''s brutally poetic Red Cavalry stories." -- Washington Post "A beautiful tale of persistence and dogged survival." -- Los Angeles Times "[ The Sojourn ] can be read as a classic of war. It is beautifully plotted, as rapt and understated as a hymn. . . . [Krivak] writes hunting scenes as evocative as those in The Deer Hunter . Then he outstrips that film in rending the harrowing and seductive elements of war." -- Plain Dealer "Charged with emotion and longing . . . this lean, resonant debut [is] an undeniably powerful accomplishment." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Unsentimental yet elegant. . . . With ease, [ The Sojourn ] joins the ranks of other significant works of fiction portraying World War I--Erich Maria Remarque''s All Quiet on the Western Front or Ernest Hemingway''s A Farewell to Arms ." -- Library Journal (starred review) On The Signal Flame "A novel of tremendous sorrow and tremendous beauty. . . . An incandescent work." -- Marlon James "Page by page the book itself feels like an outgrowth of the soil in which it is steeped." -- Brad Kessler "It isn''t often that a story finds me making comparisons to literary greats from the first page. This is one of those books. In the end, what Krivak does is something all his own, and it is a triumph." -- Maaza Mengiste "With The Signal Flame Andrew Krivak shows us what masterful fiction can do. . . . Like a dream the story swallowed me up, and I came out of it more aware of the narrative power of my own life." -- Thomas Moore "A well-crafted novel, elegantly told, The Signal Flame is a testament to Krivak''s singular talent." -- Jesmyn Ward "A satisfying act of conjuration, the sine qua non of realistic fiction: a vivid rendering of felt life." -- Boston Globe "A gripping tale." -- Buffalo News "Breathtaking. . . . It''s Krivak''s gorgeous prose and deep grasp of the relationship between longing and loss that make the book such a stunner." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Krivak''s story and characters are mythic. His prose is spare, but his portrait of a little-known mountain region ''rife with stones and rattlesnakes'' is compelling, beautiful, and ennobling." -- Booklist (starred review) "With studied language and a strong sense of place, Krivak elucidates how family structures and narratives fractured, maintained, and evolved between World War I and the Vietnam War." -- Library Journal (starred review)”

Praise for The Bear

NEA Big Read selection
Mountain Book Competition Winner
Massachusetts Book Awards Winner
Chautauqua Prize Finalist
Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist
Julia Ward Howe Book Award Finalist

“The Bear is a luminous book of a standard one sees perhaps once every generation. . . . As [it] tenderly breaks your heart, piece by piece, it fills that void with something powerful and timeless. Written with precision, clarity, and gentle fluidity, The Bear reminds us that all we need to know awaits us in the wild.” —Pete Takeda, Mountain Book Competition Jury citation

“This fable about seeking harmony with nature by Earth's last human inhabitants—a father and daughter—has lessons of love, loss, family and survival.” —Massachusetts Book Awards jury citation

“Lyrical. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Krivak’s serene and contemplative novel invites us to consider a vision of time as circular, of existence as grand and eternal.” —Washington Post

“Arresting, exquisite. . . . The Bear is more than a parable for our times, it’s a call to listen to the world around us before it’s too late.” —Observer

“Beautiful. . . . So loving and vivid that you can feel the lake water and smell the sea. . . . A perfect fable for the age of solastalgia.” —Slate

“[A] tender apocalyptic fable . . . endowed with such fullness of meaning that you have to assign this short, touching book its own category: the post-apocalypse utopia.” — Wall Street Journal

“A powerful allegory about the struggles and graces of life.” —America Magazine

“A beautiful, gripping, thought-provoking exploration of human rewilding and nature’s dominion.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“With artistry and grace . . . Krivak delivers a transcendent journey into a world where all living things—humans, animals, trees—coexist in magical balance, forever telling each other’s unique stories. This beautiful and elegant novel is a gem.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A moving post-apocalyptic fable for grown-ups. . . . Ursula K. Le Guin would approve.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Engagingly different. . . . Unfolds in graceful, luminous prose.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“[Krivak’s] sentences are polished stones of wonder. . . . The elegiac tone reflects what is lost and what will be lost, an enchantment as if Wendell Berry had reimagined Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” —Booklist

“The power of a classic myth. . . . Krivak’s lyrical tribute to the natural world and the necessity for humans to coexist with it is an essential message cloaked within an allegory of haunting beauty.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers

“A lovely, unforgettable experience.” —Foreword Reviews

“In spare and lovely prose, Andrew Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds. This book follows you, like a river under ice.” —Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son and Fortune Smiles

“A tight yet expansive novel in prose so vivid you forget these are words and not the cedar, trout, and stones of a post-Anthropocene Earth. Through the middle of The Bear walks an unnamed girl whose determination to go on living will fill you with awe.” —Salvatore Scibona, author of The End and The Volunteer

“Reading The Bear will bring you back to the wonder-filled stories of childhood, the sort that linger, that alter our understanding of the world, that shape who we become. Such is the simple and profound power of Krivak’s unexpectedly hopeful novel. Crafted with as much care and mastery as the finest oaken bow, this is a book that manages to be both timeless and urgent, clear-eyed and tender-hearted, archetypal and unconventional: a bedtime tale told by a prophet. A wonder in itself.” —Josh Weil, author of The New Valley and The Age of Perpetual Light

More Praise for Andrew Krivak

“Some writers are good at drawing a literary curtain over reality, and then there are writers who raise the veil and lead us to see for the first time. Krivak belongs to the latter.” —National Book Award judges’ citation

“[Krivak’s] sentences accrue and swell and ultimately break over a reader like water: they are that supple and bracing and shining.” —Leah Hager Cohen

“Incandescent.” —Marlon James

“A writer of rare and powerful elegance.” —Mary Doria Russell

“Destined for great things.” —Richard Russo

“[A] singular talent.” —Jesmyn Ward

“An extraordinarily elegant writer, with a deep awareness of the natural world.” —New York Times Book Review

“[Krivak] bring[s] out the vast compassion, humanity and love of his rich, fully developed characters.” —Star Tribune

“Krivak’s story and characters are mythic.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Krivak has his own voice, given to lyrical observations on the nature of human existence.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Andrew Krivak is an award-winning writer whose books include Mule Boy; The Bear, a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read selection; and the freestanding novels of the Dardan Trilogy: The Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize; The Signal Flame, a Chautauqua Prize finalist; and Like the Appearance of Horses, a Library Journal "Best Book of the Year" and Indie Next List for Reading Groups selection. He is a discussion facilitator with the Family Connections Center, New Hampshire Department of Corrections, and visiting lecturer on English at Harvard University. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

A gorgeous fable of Earth's last two human inhabitants, and a girl's journey home. In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion.

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