Book Description

The story of a grizzly bear named Millie: her life, death, and cubs, and what they reveal about the changing character of the American West. Grand Prize Winner of the Banff Mountain Book Competition An “ode to wildness and wilderness” Down from the Mountain tells the story of one grizzly in the changing Montana landscape (Outside Magazine). Millie was cunning, a fiercely protective mother to her cubs. But raising those cubs in the mountains was hard, as the climate warmed and people crowded the valleys. There were obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones, like the corn field that drew her into sure trouble. That trouble is where award-winning writer, farmer, and conservationist Bryce Andrews’s story intersects with Millie’s. In this “welcome and impressive work” he shows how this drama is “the core of a major problem in the rural American West—the disagreement between large predatory animals and invasive modern settlers”—an entangled collision where the shrinking wilds force human and bear into ever closer proximity (Barry Lopez). “The two sides of Bryce Andrews—enlightened rancher and sensitive writer—appear to make a smooth fit . . . Precise and evocative prose.” —The Washington Post “Rife with lyrical precision, first-hand know-how, ursine charisma, and a narrative jujitsu flip that places all empathy with his bears, Down from the Mountain is a one-of-a-kind triumph even here in the home of Doug Peacock and Douglas Chadwick.” —David James Duncan, author of The River Why “Would that we had more nature writing like Bryce Andrews’s fantastic second book, Down from the Mountain . . . A subtle and beautifully unexpected book.” —Literary Hub