In 1984, when I was starting out as a private investigator, a Tlingit woman told me about a woman who had married a bear and had children by him. She swore it was true, and I believed her.
There are many stories about the coupling of bears and human beings. These stories appear in languages throughout the north. The version that I was told differs from other versions collected by scholars and folklorists. The seed that eventually became this book may have been a combination of two traditional stories, one about a man who married a bear and the other of a woman. One is a coastal story from southeastern Alaska and the other comes from the northern interior. This novel is not meant to displace or contradict any of the scholarly work that has been done by such people as Dick and Nora Dauenhauer, and Catherine McClellan, Gary Snyder or Paul Shepard. It is also not meant to displace the vibrant stories that are still being told in kitchens and around fires all over the north.
The characters and events of this story are products of my labor and imagination. Alaska, of course, remains very real. The cities of Sitka, Juneau, and Anchorage are easily found on current maps. The town of Stellar is fictional.
This book could not have reached this form without a great deal of help. In many ways, both obvious and obscure, it is a collaborative work, and I want to express my most grateful thanks to the people who helped it along its way: To Nita Couchman, Lauren Davis, Ann Douglas, Rick Friedman, Galen Paine, Jake Schumacher, Jan Straley, and Robin Viens for reviewing the manuscript in its various stages and saving me from the more obvious forms of embarrassment.
To Juris Jurjevics and Laura Hruska of Soho Press for pulling me off the pile, and breathing some life into my work.
And to my friends and teachers, Annie Jacobs, Joseph Moriarity and Nelson Bentley, for their generosity and their love of words: written, spoken, and sung.