Bear Woman

For readers of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Taddeo and the essays of Zadie Smith, Bear Woman is a beautifully wrought memoir from one of Sweden's bestselling authors.

A beautifully written and astonishing memoir of a woman—a writer—in the midst of motherhood, marriage and life.

While struggling with the demands of family and career, the writer discovers a figure from history, Marguerite de la Rocque, a sixteenth-century noblewoman who was abandoned, pregnant, on a remote island in Nova Scotia. When she is finally rescued, her lover and her baby have died, but she has survived this inhospitable wilderness, alone, for two long years. It's a remarkable story of survival, but one that has been consigned to a footnote.

Delving deeper into Marguerite's hidden life, the writer begins to question her ability to tell this story, the story of any women in history—or even her own.

'The deeply personal journey of a writer, surprising and illuminating, and for me, familiar in the most reassuring way as she loses herself in this compelling story.' - Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky