The Bear
The Bear is a slim, fable-like novel set in a distant future where humanity has dwindled to a single father and his young daughter, living quietly in a cabin at the foot of a mountain. The father teaches the girl to hunt, fish, forage, and read the rhythms of the seasons, preparing her for a world she will eventually face without him. When a journey to the sea ends in tragedy, the girl is left alone and forms an unlikely bond with a bear who guides her home through a long winter. Andrew Krivak writes in clean, unhurried prose that treats the natural world as a living companion rather than a backdrop. The result is a gentle meditation on grief, belonging, and the quiet persistence of life after people are gone, closer to myth than to conventional science fiction.
What you might want to know about The Bear
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In a depopulated future, a father raises his daughter as the last two humans, until she must learn to survive on her own.
Not really; it reads more like a gentle fable about nature and survival than a plot-driven dystopia.
The girl communicates with a bear and other creatures, and the book treats this with the matter-of-fact tone of a folktale.
The Bear was written by Andrew Krivak, published in 2020 by HighBridge Audio.
The Bear is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.