Watch the Bear

A Half Century with the Brown Bears of Alaska

DEREK STONOROV

Derek Stonorov has spent the better part of fifty years watching brown bears as a research scientist and guide in some of Alaska’s most beautiful wild places. As a dyslexic kid who was more interested in hunting and cars than academics, he managed to collect objective data as well as make observations and insights about what he learned to call “the community of bears.” Watch the Bear takes the reader from the 1960s—when salmon were plentiful, Stonorov’s hair was long, and he could spend an entire summer watching hundreds of bears without seeing another human—to today, when bear guiding companies are ubiquitous and solitude in bear country is a whole lot harder to find. Mixing memoir, anecdotes, and science, Stonorov provides an inquiry into brown bear communication and social behavior as well as advice on living in harmony with bears. Through good science made accessible with stories, Stonorov offers readers an engaging and breath-taking journey into the world of a legendary but often misunderstood species.

Derek Stonorov is a retired wildlife biologist and guide working out of Homer, Alaska. He has educated hundreds of students, photographers, filmmakers, scientists, and tourists about brown bears. Stonorov has written articles for Natural History magazine and produced booklets for Alaska Fish and Game, the Nature Conservancy, Alaska Audubon, the National Park Service, and others. He has also written and directed several films, including the award-winning Way of the Bear

Changing Woman

A Novel of the Camp Grant Massacre VENETIA HOBSON LEWIS

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregón and her ambitious husband, Raúl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl, into womanhood in Aravaipa Canyon. Mexican and Anglo settlers have pushed the Apaches from their lands, and the Apaches carry out raids against them. In turn, the settlers, angered by the failure of the U.S. government and the military to protect them, respond with a murderous raid on an Apache encampment under the protection of the U.S. military at Camp Grant, kidnapping Nest Feather and other Apache children. In Tucson, while Valeria finds fulfillment in her work as a seamstress, Raúl struggles to hide from her his role in the bloody attack, and Nest Feather, adopted by a Mexican couple there, tries to hold on to her Apache heritage in a culture that rejects her very being. Against the backdrop of the massacre trial, Valeria and Nest Feather’s lives intersect in the church, as Valeria seeks spiritual guidance for the decision she must make and Nest Feather prepares for a Christian baptism.

Venetia Hobson Lewis worked at several stock brokerages and for almost eighteen years as a corporate paralegal for a motion picture studio. She is the author of several award-winning Western short stories.

March 2023

240 pages

Environment / American West / Natural History Rights: World

June 2023

248 pages

Historical Fiction / Westerns / Native Studies / Apache / Southwestern U.S. Rights: World

May 2023

224 pages, American HIstory / Environment / Midwest / Great Plains Rights: World