Customer Reviews

Bear Daughter

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
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Heroic quests are not my favorite reading material: blood and guts, the underworld, all that death. Yet I've been taken with this daring revision of the genre, inspired by Native American myth but drawing as much on the realm of magic and the fantastic. The heroine is Cloud, twelve years old, who wakes one morning transformed, in Berman's sly inversion of Kafka, from a powerful grizzly bear into a girl. Cloud encountering her strange new body introduces one of the story's preoccupations: the difficulty of claiming all parts of herself, from delicate human fingers to the animal thirst for fresh blood. Berman's exploration of this theme is often tenderly humorous, sometimes startling, never trite.

Bear Daughter is a riveting fantasy with an array of wizards, plot twists, and yes, heroic quest conventions. It's hard to put down. But Berman's up to more than just a page-turner here with her bear-girl on a quest. Bear Daughter is a foray not just into the mythic and actual past of the Northwest coast, but into a fantastic ecology that reveals a piercing clarity regarding the destructive and redemptive powers of the natural world. The world of Bear Daughter comes alive--the orcas and salmon that Berman describes are gorgeous renditions of the inhabitants of the Northwest waters. At the same time, this landscape is a shifting, eerie, interior world, reflecting the emotionally chaotic path of the young heroine, resisting her destiny almost every step of the way. You will find this novel classified as science fiction/fantasy, but it should find enthusiastic readers interested in women's issues, nature, myth or just a really good read.

Bear Daughter evokes American Indian myth and lore of the Pacific Northwest, an unmined and ignored realm, and Berman knows her stuff. This is rich in detail and fully realized, with a young adult story line that is so true of heart, so honest in its emotional textures that it should appeal to any fiction reader. There's been a good deal of talk about where fantasy should go after Potter, and back to Narnia and more Brit Isles sorcery settings is a stale move. Let me profess this...Bear Daughter offers a truly original direction. A must read. And a must tell your friends.

Bear Daughter is a book that renews my faith in the fantasy genre. Fantasy so often seems stuck in the Northern/Western European rut, reworking the same legends and material over and over. Author Judith Berman is a card-carrying anthropologist who uses cultures of the Pacific Northwest as the material for this tale of a girl's journey.

One day a bear wakes up to find she has become a girl. It turns out that her mother is a human woman and her father is a deity in bear form. After spending her childhood as a bear, her bear form falls away and she is suddenly a girl on the brink of womanhood. Her mother's people name her Cloud, and she begins the task of learning to be human. However, she is troubled by dreams, and is driven by internal and external circumstances to address the cause of her recurrent dreams.

All this takes place in a very realistically depicted Pacific Northwest Native American community, with traditions and practices that ring true. The author doesn't clobber the reader with her scholarship - rather it adds richness to every aspect of the story. Similarly, Berman is not constrained by her material, but is able to use it as a point of departure for her craft, creating new settings that are consistent with the cultures she knows well, but are new.

The subject of the book is a young adult, but this is not an easy read. The topics are no gnarlier than most young adult books cover, but Cloud's journey is a complex one. No doubt her trials will seem more immediate to a younger reader, but this is a book for adults to enjoy just as much.

I really liked this book and identified with the theme and action. I have been studying shamanic texts for about
20-25 years, and this author (who is an anthropologist) really knows her stuff. You can hardly put the book down, and the story seems much like a long shamanic journey having to do with redemption and ancestor
healing. I was somewhat put off by the gore and violence when it occurred, although I also felt it was probably
in keeping with the time setting of her novel. I have recommended it to many of my friends and fellow practitioners. I hope Judith Berman will continue to write more of these wonderful stories! Cheers for her first
fictional endeavor!

I'm not a reader of fantasy or science fiction; I came to this book as an anthropologist who works with Native peoples. As such I am sensitive to a host of social and intellectual issues raised by this book, including cultural appropriation and the definition and use of fiction, myth, and fantasy. The author is also an anthropologist and addresses many of these on a web site. This book can be read and discussed on many levels, which is one of its many virtues. But simply as a reader response....
I encountered Bear Daughter when it was first released and have not stopped thinking about it since. I've purchased many copies as gifts. This book is powerfully experiential-I've never been so deeply transported by words into the essence of another cultural reality. Like her subjects, this book is magical: Berman's words evoke sensory worlds:light, color, scent, sounds-these provoke sensory and emotional responses in the reader. Once captivated, the reader is forced to accompany the protagonist as she is propelled through a series of confrontations with profound forces in often fearful territory. These are at once both culturally specific and universal. In a word, epic.

Judith Berman's Bear Daughter is fantasy at its best and is recommended for adult and young adult fantasy fans alike. Pre-teen Cloud wakes up as a human girl, having shed her bear father heritage - but her mother's human husband, King Rumble, can't abide her and fears her heritage. Cloud wants to be a normal human girl - but King Rumble can't forget her heritage and threat to his rule, so Cloud must embark on a journey away from her beloved home. Myth and folklore blend in a satisfying story of a young girl's coming of age.

I can only add a hearty "hear hear" to all the heartfelt praise given to this book. It is a revelation to read, particularly because it is based on cultures we have not heard from: the Tlingit and Kwakiutl peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Ms. Berman has done these people honor by crafting a tale based on their myths, legends, and culture. And she has created the book much as Cloud herself was born, by putting on the bear robe of these people until they are a part of her and then turning that connection inside out, swallowing the myths into herself, to show the world a new mask. (All this will make more sense once you read the book.) It's unfortunate that the paperback is out of print, but now with the Kindle edition others can carry it where I carry it, next to my heart.

On a broader level, this book is fantasy. It opens on Cloud, who is her mother's daughter, who has spent the first twelve years of her life as the happy daughter of a human woman called Thrush, and a bear father, called Lord Stink, one of the First People. Her stepfather, Lord Rumble, has killed, and eaten the heart of, her father, and taken her mother, Thrush, for his woman.

A lot of people are surprised that Cloud became human. No one expected it. Bear's lost her memories, too. The only things she remembers are glimpses, in dreams and images. There's an empty place in her, one that no food will fill. Her mother's forced to reject her, and Lord Rumble wants her dead. I mean, what's a girl to do, but run away from home when her stepfather tries to kill her?

Thus begins Cloud's journey, a travel among and between the mortal and immortal worlds, in a search to find the bones of her father and brothers, and take them to the Edge of the World so that they can be born anew, even though she doesn't quite feel up to the task laid before her. It is a journey where she will learn to accept herself, her origins, and embrace both her past, and her future, while trying to learn how to live as a human girl.

With Native American mythology as its base, Cloud's story engages you from the beginning, as you follow her quest, which is as much coming to terms with who and what she is, as to save the spirits of her father and brothers.

On a more focused level, this is a story about one young woman's struggle to come to terms with herself, a voyage of discovery to find out who she is, what is her purpose in life, to stretch and surpass her limits. It is a story of acceptance, and of self-acceptance.

And, quite frankly, it's a good read.

One day Cloud wakes up to find she is a twelve year old human girl and no longer the bear she once was. Her mother Thrush is glad to see her daughter take human form but her husband King Rumble of Sandspit Town is horrified and banishes her from her mother's home. She goes to stay with Aunt Glory who tells her she must visit the seer Winter in Whale Town. Rumble tries to kill her and sends his wizard to make sure she never comes home again.

She makes her way to Winter and her husband the wizard Otter who tells her she is half mortal and half divine, a fact that scares her because her father is one of the First People who walked the Earth as a Bear who killed many people. Rumble who loved Thrush, Blush's mother, rescued her and killed her father and brothers and bound their bones together so they cannot be reborn. They cry out to Blush in her dreams and she undergoes many dangerous adventures to undo what Rumble has done and in the process accepts herself and her dual nature.

This is a delightfully imaginative world where magic exists and is used the way people in our world use machinery. The protagonist travels through many realms and sees wondrous sights but she doesn't have time to enjoy any of them because she is in constant danger and must keep on the move. Readers will empathize with her fears and hope she finds peace in a world that treats her like an outcast.

Harriet Klausner

"Bear Daughter" reads like a novel length myth/legend from one of the North American indian tribes. A girl (who was born a bear) upon turning into a human is taken in by her grandmother. Her step father violently opposes the bear-girl's existence, and forbids the mother any contact. His disapproval eventually forces her to flee the villaige. Much of the plot centers upon the bear-girl moving from one community to another, loosely tied together by a quest to save her siblings' and father's gosts.

I'm fond of myths and legends. My problems with this book is the atmosphere -- the bear girl is constantly mistreated, everywhere she goes, and this gets old, fast.