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The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear
by Bryce Andrews
The story of a grizzly bear named Millie: her life, death, and cubs, and what they reveal about the changing character of the American West.
The grizzly is one of North America's few remaining large predators. Their range is diminished, but they're spreading across the West again. Descending into valleys where once they were king, bears find the landscape they'd known for eons utterly changed by the new most dominant animal: humans. As the grizzlies approach, the people of the region are wary, at best, of their return.<
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In searing detail, award-winning writer, Montana rancher, and conservationist Bryce Andrews tells us about one such grizzly. Millie is a typical mother: strong, cunning, fiercely protective of her cubs. But raising those cubs - a challenging task in the best of times - becomes ever harder as the mountains change, the climate warms and people crowd the valleys. There are obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones as well, like the corn field that draws her out of the foothills and sets her on a path toward trouble and ruin.
That trouble is where Bryce's story intersects with Millie's. It is the heart of Down from the Mountain, a singular drama evoking a much larger one: an entangled, bloody collision between two species in the modern-day West, where the shrinking wilds force man and bear into ever closer proximity.
"Starred Review. A gem of environmental writing fitting alongside the work of Doug Peacock, Roger Caras, and other champions of wildlife and wild land." - Kirkus
"To ensure their survival, Andrews concludes, the bears must modify their behavior to avoid confrontation. Andrews's well-written cautionary tale leaves readers with the sobering message that humans must as well, if they are to be responsible stewards of nature." - Publishers Weekly
"This fascinating, well-researched, and lyrical memoir will appeal to conservationists, those curious about large predators, and readers who relish stories of the West." - Library Journal
"Would that we had more nature writing like Bryce Andrews's fantastic second book, Down from the Mountain...A subtle and beautifully unexpected book...Readers hungry for yet another torch bearer to the ways of thinking of the wild that Barry Lopez and Leslie Marmon Silko made possible should look no further." - Literary Hub
"Bryce Andrews' wonderful Down from the Mountain is deeply informed by personal experience and made all the stronger by his compassion and measured thoughts...Rife with lyrical precision, first-hand know-how, ursine charisma, and a narrative jujitsu flip that places all empathy with his bears, Down from the Mountain is a one-of-a-kind triumph even here in the home of Doug Peacock and Douglas Chadwick." - David James Duncan, author of The River Why and The Brothers K
"In stunning prose, as powerful as the grizzly itself, Andrews's draws the reader into the mysterious lives of these bears...Down from the Mountain will sear its beauty and sorrow into your soul. Required reading for all Homo Sapiens." - Elisabeth Tova Bailey, author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
"The fluidity of Andrews' imagination and the reality of his time on the ground with people and bears make this book a piece of true history. He is not a journalist, but a participant with skin in the game, who happens to be an excellent writer. Putting up fence along the porous line between humans and big, foraging bears, Andrews is the one you'd want telling this story." - Craig Childs, author of The Animal Dialogues and Atlas of a Lost World
"Writing with a keen empathy for both the great grizzlies of Montana's Mission Mountains, and the farmers and wildlife officers coping in the valley below, this book is by turns heartbreaking and hopeful, even while it zings along with the high-stakes pace of a thriller. It's as true as it gets." - Malcolm Brooks, author of Painted Horses
Returning home from ten days in the backcountry, I devoured this fabulous and feral book in a single sitting and found myself utterly immersed in the 'unforgiving arcadia' that is our vanishing West...For two decades as a hunter, angler and hiker I've traversed the very country described herein. I have never seen it with such sustained clarity as through the vital lens of Bryce Andrews' luminous prose." -Chris Dombrowski, author of Body of Water
This information about Down from the Mountain was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bryce Andrews is the author of Badluck Way, winner of the Barnes & Nobel Discover Great New Writers Award, the Reading the West Book Award for nonfiction, and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He works with the conservation group People and Carnivores and has advocated for our public lands in front of Congress.
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