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    The Woman Who Married a Bear
    The Woman Who Married a Bear
    The Woman Who Married a Bear
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Woman Who Married a Bear

    Written by John Straley

    Narrated by David Chandler

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police's investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything new. But after a failed assassination attempt and the discovery of previously missed evidence, Younger finds himself traveling across Alaska to discover the truth in a midst of conspiracies, politics, and Tlingit mythology. High drama meets local color as Cecil Younger works to uncover the motive and identity of the killer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781501987212
    The Woman Who Married a Bear

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    Reviews for The Woman Who Married a Bear

    3.5/5

    60 ratings6 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The prose is lovely. The setting is immersive, and the lead character is troubled and persistent. Characters are all well and sympathetically drawn and I loved the intertwine of myth and present reality. Straley evokes Alaska with love and a headshake for all its peccadilloes. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      A little bit mystery and a little bit native mysticism, this novel has charming damaged man characters and was thoroughly enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      An unreformed alcoholic gumshoe mess of a man rummages thru one beautiful, wet, cold state. The author loves Alaska and he rubs your thoughts in its natural beauty and its thrown-together (except for Juneau) cities and towns. He values the Tlingit peoples, much more than he does the latest hip whites. He tells a Tlingit story—the woman who married a bear. Our detective spends more time with these people than with the rest of the community. He is a failure in much in life (as any good detective should be) but is curious and dogged. He also has trouble staying away from the bottle. Bottles seem to be everywhere in this book. The plot is not as important as the location and the characters. But that’s fine with me. One more thing: the author studied poetry and writing and it shows.
    • 3/5
      While it was an interesting book, I don't know if I can read much more of the series unless Cecil starts to deal with his issues of being the son of a respected Judge.PI Cecil Younger has serious issues with accepting life and hides in drink as much as possible. Yet he's also enamoured by eastern mysticism of living in the moment. The book is written that way: our focus is always caught by what's happening outside, birds, people walking by, reminders of an ex-lover. The mystery is solved almost by accident, since the detective never seems to know what he is doing.Straley's writing is full of imagery, comparisons that I wouldn't have thought of. "Sometimes I think rain is like grief that I have to endure." (p.114). "Suicide, murder. It can be impulsive...the surprise ending in the story you tell about your life...The narrative of your life doesn't take you there bu the content of the story does" (p 119-120). I like the way some chapters will open with musing on a topic and close with that same topic. It rounds out the chapter, makes it seem complete and unique in itself. e.g. Chapter 9 begins with "There are some questions so graceful that they should only be asked...", goes on to consider one question about Alaska, get entwined in action and finding some answers, and ends with "There are questions that should not be answered but I never know which questions those are." In most novels I don't pay any attention to how chapters are divided and, except for indicating a break in action, I'm not sure most authors do either.I read a version of the tale with the same name retold by Elizabeth James, (merging of several Native West Coast tales) before reading this mystery and was completely confused about how they fit together. Finally a friend tells Cecil the story, and that version (in which the women has her half-bear children eat the father) makes sense. The version I read emphasized the arrogance of the woman before she married, how she learned love and respect for her bear husband, and how that attitude was passed on to the Tlingit people.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of the Cecil Younger stories. Cecil is a young man in his mid-thirties who He now lives in Sitka, Alaska. He grew up in Juneau and traveled a bit trying out several careers before realizing that what drives him is his curiosity and a sense of justice that requires him to find out what has happened in any given situation. There is a difference between the facts and the truth.
      In this quest to find himself, please his father, accept the fact that the woman who loved him has left him and just plain for the fun of it Cecil prefers to spend most of his time in an altered state. He has grown quite accustomed to find himself face down somewhere after a night of calming after hitting the low spots. But he does work as a private detective and when he gets a call to look into a cold case, a few years old with the purported murderer already incarcerated he jumps at the chance to do something besides rapes and robberies. Before 24 hours have past he is on somebody’s hit list and he has to solve this case or die in the process.
      All of the books in this Straley series have entertaining titles. The next is The Curious Eat Themselves and Cecil Younger is well worth getting to know.
    • 5/5
      This book is the first in a series of books about Cecil Younger, private investigator. Cecil’s life is not the glamorous PI life we often read about. First, Cecil lives in Sitka, Alaska, not the lower 48. Secondly, he loves poetry, broods about the woman who loved him and left him, and he is an unreformed alcoholic. The son of a judge and the brother of a successful lawyer, Cecil is considered the family failure. He, also, will not let go of the search for the “truth” (in all its various guises) of a case once he has started. An elderly resident of a nursing home asks Cecil to find the “truth” about the murder of her son, for which an inmate is serving time following his confession and trial. The seeker soon becomes the hunted after Cecil’s housemate is shot and it becomes obvious that Cecil was the target. The tale was engrossing. The settings seemed authentically Alaskan. And Cecil is someone you want to shake to get a grip on his life. I’ve already ordered the next two in the series.