Bear Daughter

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.

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.

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.

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.