Black Bear

A Story of Siblinghood and Survival

Trina Moyles

A dazzling memoir about one woman's coexistence with bears in the boreal forest and a singular meditation on sibling loss.

When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father, a wildlife biologist known in Peace River as "the bear guy," brought home an orphaned black bear cub for a night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. This brief but unforgettable encounter spurred Trina’s lifelong fascination with Ursus americanus—the most populous bear on the northern landscape, often considered a nuisance to human society. As a child roaming the shores of the Peace in the footsteps of her beloved older brother, Brendan, she understood bears to be invisible entities: always present but mostly hidden and worthy of respect. Growing up during the oil boom of the 1990s, the threats in the siblings' hard-drinking resource town were more human, dividing them from a natural reverence for the land, and eventually, from each other.

After years of working for human rights organizations, Trina returned to northern Alberta for a job as a fire tower lookout, while Brendan worked in the oil sands, vulnerable to a boom-and-bust economy and substance addiction. When she was assigned to a tower in a wildlife corridor, bears were alarmingly visible and plentiful, wandering metres away on the other side of an electrified fence surrounding the tower. Over four summers, Trina begins to move beyond fear and observe the extraordinary essence of the maligned black bear—a keystone species who is as subject to the environmental consequences of the oil economy as humans. At the same time, she searches for common ground with Brendan on the land that bonded them.

Impassioned and eloquent, Black Bear is a story of grief and a vision of peaceful coexistence in a divided world. It captures the fragility of our relationships with human and nonhuman species alike, and the imperative to protect the wild—along with the people we hold closest.

Trina Moyles is an environmental journalist, creative producer, and author. Her debut book, Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World was a finalist for the High Plains Literary Awards and is currently being adapted into a documen­tary film. Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest, a memoir about her work as a fire tower lookout in northwestern Alberta, won a National Outdoor Book Prize. In 2022, Moyles received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, the province's highest honour for the arts, for her dedication to writing. She lives in Whitehorse, Yukon with her partner and their three dogs. Read more at www.trinamoyles.com.
Instagram @trinariannemoyles

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Endorsements & Reviews

“I read Black Bear late into the night, heart splitting open with Trina Moyles’ astonishingly witnessed exploration of how both bears and humans navigate solitude and connection. Perfect for fans of H is For Hawk, this book is an indelible portrait of siblinghood that will make readers think deeply not only about how we live with both ursine and human beings, but what it means to navigate the 21st century while working closely with the land, whether in the oil fields or as a fire lookout.” Erica Berry, award-winning author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear

“Trina Moyles delivers a captivating yet heartbreaking exploration of the threads that bind us—to the wild, to each other, and to ourselves. With lyrical precision, she draws haunting parallels between the rhythms of the natural world and the complex, often fragile dynamics of family. Far more than a work of natural history, Black Bear is a profound meditation on loss and the enduring connections that shape our lives. One of the best books I’ve read in years. This touching narrative will be hard to forget.” Gloria Dickie, author of Eight Bears, a New Yorker Best Book of the Year

"Moyles’ heart-clenching memoir about siblinghood and bears shows us the value of embracing what scares us. Moyles’ brilliantly balances the human and animal worlds in a way that will leave you loving each one a little more. I couldn’t put this down." Tove Danovich, author of Under the Henfluence

"Black Bear isn't just a beautifully written memoir of nature and family. It calls on us to notice, to appreciate, to examine the world and our place in it. Trina Moyles tells her story in a way that will make you think differently about your own." David Litt, national bestselling author of It’s Only Drowning

Praise for Trina Moyles

“Trina Moyles is a natural storyteller. As a novice fire lookout, she retreats into the bush, her heart and self-trust broken, all while a record-breaking wildfire rages toward her. Courageous, vulnerable, funny and enthralling. Above all else, it imparts a much-needed message of hope and regeneration." Jan Redford, author of End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood

“A vital and howling missive of a book. Lookout holds the wide wisdom and fierce beauty of the boreal forest it depicts. She writes as a wild and erudite witness, bursting with hunger and feral passion for the living world.” Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation 

“Trina Moyles has written a beautiful, closely observed love letter to the boreal forest and the wilderness of northern Canada at a time when it is threatened by unprecedented change. A powerful, unforgettable story about the ways that solitude in nature can break us down, and then put us back together again.” Eva Holland, author of Nerve: A Personal Journey Through the Science of Fear

“Moyles tells a totally engrossing story of fear and love, self-recrimination and healing, by turns vivid with memory and presence. Page after page, I felt immersed in the rejuvenating wonders of the natural world, rendered here in all their magnificent, everchanging detail. Reader, you will roar through this book.” Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt