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Touching Spirit Bear

Amazon.com Price:  $21.34 (as of 05/05/2019 06:46 PST- Details)

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Description

Within Cole Matthews lies anger, rage, and hate. Cole has been stealing and fighting for years.  This time he caught Peter Driscal in the parking lot and smashed his head against the sidewalk.  Now, Peter may have permanent brain damage–and Cole is in the biggest trouble of his life.

Cole receives a one-year banishment to a remote Alaskan island. There, he is mauled by a mysterious white bear of Native American legend.  Hideously injured, Cole waits for death. His thoughts shift from anger to humility. To continue to exist, he will have to stop blaming others and take responsibility for his life.  Rescuers arrive to save Cole’s body, but it’s the attack of the Spirit Bear that may save his soul.
Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, smug–in short, a bully. His anger has taken him too far this time, though. After beating up a ninth-grade classmate to the point of brain damage, Cole is facing a prison sentence. But then a Tlingit Indian parole officer named Garvey enters his life, offering an alternative known as Circle Justice, based on Native American traditions, in which victim, offender, and community all work together to find a healing solution. Privately, Cole sneers at the concept that, but he is no fool–if it gets him out of prison, he will do anything. In the long run, Cole ends up banished for one year to a remote Alaskan island, where his arrogance sets him directly in the path of a mysterious, legendary white bear. Mauled almost to death, Cole awaits his fate and begins the transition from anger to humility.

Ben Mikaelsen’s depiction of a juvenile delinquent’s metamorphosis into a caring, thinking individual is exciting and fascinating, if at times heavy-handed. Cole’s nastiness and the vivid depictions of the lengths he will have to go to continue to exist after the (equally vivid) attack by the bear are excruciating at times, but the concept that of finding a way to heal a whole community when one individual wrongs another is compelling. The jacket cover photo of the writer in a bear hug with the 700-pound black bear that he and his wife adopted and raised is definitely worth seeing! (Ages 12 and older) –Emilie Coulter

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