Book of the Week: The Bear by Claire Cameron

With her second novel, Toronto writer Claire Cameron manages to create something both quintessentially Canadian and breathtakingly fresh, a story of survival in the Canadian wilderness, told from the point of view of a five-year-old.The Bear begins with a family camping trip to a remote island. Five-year-old Anna awakens in the dark to the sound of her mother screaming as a bear attacks their campsite. It will fall to Anna to protect her younger brother, to keep them both alive, as the world begins to turn on them.

Cameron draws on her own experience as a wilderness instructor in Algonquin Park and for Outward Bound, and the deepest fears of parents everywhere, to create a novel that is terrifying, beautiful and thrilling. The Bear is poised to become an international sensation, with simultaneous publication in Canada, the US and the UK this month.