Saxton Reads! & Reviews

I bought The Bear's Embrace after hearing Ann Kingman talk about it on Books On The Nightstand Episode #38, Remarkable Lives... 

I knew when I started this book that it would be painful to read, so why put myself through it? I thought it might give me an insight into what it takes to survive and thought surely it would end feeling hopeful. It was not to be as simple as that. .. 

Each reader will take something different from The Bear's Embrace. For me, that Patricia Van Tighem can share her story in an effort to heal herself and to help others, attests to her spirit. What a special woman.

In 1983, Patricia and her husband, Trevor are out for a hike in the beautiful Canadian Rockies when they are attacked by a grizzly bear. They live to tell and you think that will be the end of the story. As Patricia describes the next eighteen years of her life you realize just how much one moment in time can change all that is to come.

In one part of the book Patricia describes an interview with a Calgary Herald reporter a short time after the attack. The resulting story makes her livid for his commentary and here is how she describes her feelings.

"The reporter says Trevor and I look better than two people have a right to look less than four months after tangling with an angry grizzly bear. Better than we have a right to look? What kind of statement is that?After hours and hours in surgery, the months in hospital, we have every right to look as "well" as we do. I don't want to feel that I am disappointing as a bear-mauling victim. I won't give any more interviews. They just don't understand."

It was at this point that I went and found the most elegant bookmark I could to mark my place. Patricia deserved it!

I rarely cry reading a book but by the time I finished Patricia Van Tighem's story my emotions were a wreck. It was not what I expected but it is a story I won't forge and will share with others. Several hours later I decided to search for her on the Internet to see what else she might have written as she is a gifted writer. Instead of further writings I found her obituary. Patricia Van Tighem Janz, at the age of 47, found peace by her decision to end her life. I am sorry for her suffering. I humbly applaud her for what she has left us.