HOW TO SURVIVE A BEAR ATTACK: A Memoir
In this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron confronts the rare genetic mutation that gave her cancer by investigating an equally rare and terrifying event—a predatory bear attack.
When Claire Cameron was nine years old, her father, a professor of Old English, told her he was dying. In the years after he was gone, she found a way to overcome her grief among the rivers and lakes of Algonquin Park, a vast Canadian wilderness area. Around that same time, in 1991, a couple was killed by a black bear in a rare predatory attack in the park. Claire was shocked and, never fully sure of what happened, the attack haunted her.
Now older, with children of her own, Cameron was diagnosed with the same kind of deadly skin cancer as her father. Caught in a second wave of grief, she was told by her doctor, “the ideal exposure to UV light is none.” No longer able to venture into the wilderness as she once had, with long scars on her back, she became obsessed with the bear attack in Algonquin Park again. How could terror rip through such a beautiful place? Could she separate truth from fiction? She headed north to investigate.
Seamlessly weaving together nature writing with true crime investigation in this unflinching account of recovery, How to Survive a Bear Attack is at once an intimate portrait of an extraordinary animal, a bracing chronicle of pain, obsession, and love, and a profoundly moving exploration of how we can understand and survive the wildness that lives inside us.
Early Praise
“True wilderness has no narrative. It is immediate, and visceral, beyond words at the time, and often beyond description later. So, it speaks to Claire Cameron’s courage and skill as a writer that she has triumphantly wrested such a compelling and profound story out of her journey, both into the wild heart of bear country, and into the terror-filled landscape of a devastating cancer diagnosis. How to Survive a Bear Attack is a transcendent, powerfully moving, brilliant literary achievement.”
— Helen Humphreys, author of Followed by the Lark
Pre-order
Also available as an audiobook, March 2025.
Related Press
Toronto author Claire Cameron's memoir investigates a predatory bear attack — cover reveal and excerpt on CBC Books
Life outdoors after a skin cancer diagnosis — a discussion with Matt Galloway on The Current, CBC Radio
How a Skin Cancer Diagnosis Changed My Relationship with the Outdoors — an essay I wrote for Outside Magazine
Past Press
My essay in The New Yorker – “Bear” Is About Much More Than Having Sex with a Bear
Neanderthals: They’re Just Like Us — a profile by Alexandra Alter in The New York Times
The Next Chapter, CBC – How Claire Cameron wrote a book set 40,000 years ago
JSTOR – The Novelist’s Risk: Researching The Last Neanderthal
The Globe and Mail – I’d want to try eating mammoth
A Word on Words - Interview with J.T. Ellison on Nashville Public Television
Life at the End of a Species: Interview with Nam Kiwanuka on The Agenda