The Woman Who Married a Bear

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: "The Woman Who Married A Bear" is an incredibly wonderful novel. It is filled with one-of-a-kind characters who mesh into a compelling, tangled story line. Add to that mix the uniqueness of Sitka, Alaska and and the craftsmanship of Straley as a writer, and you have a fine reading experience. I've ordered the other novels in the Cecil Younger series, and I can't wait to get at 'em.

Rating:
Summary: Straley Captures Sitka
Review: The opening chapter of the book is an amazing evocation of Sitka. This man knows the town, and southeast Alaska very, very well.

Main character Cecil Younger is hard to follow at times, but it's worth the trip. Loved this book!

Rating:
Summary: lukewarm beginning
Review: The two books I read last week both use the vast wilderness of Alaska as a backdrop. To me, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer was a much better book. We are told on the jacket of "The Woman Who Married a Bear: An Alaska Mystery," that author John "Straley has studied poetry with Nelson Bentley at the University of Washington and fiction with James Welch." The result is a stilted, self-conscious writing style - trying too hard to write pretty and balance precariously between Raymond Chandler and Kent Haruf. The painfully obvious writing striations detract from the story flow. This is literature that just happens to be a murder mystery and not vice versa. Maybe the author mellows out in subsequent books?