Salt Bear

Salt Bear decides, after a conversation with his best friend, Buddy the jackalope, who was scratching "behind his right prong horn just above his big floppy ear," that he needed a name. At the salt lick in Glade Park above the Colorado National Monument, he was the only animal whose name came from the name of his kind of bear rather than who he was as an individual. This starts Salt Bear off on his first journey to find out if other salt bears are alive. After all, being the only one of your kind of creature is a lot responsibility. In this journey Salt Bear first encounters a mysterious snow owl who frightens him with prophecies and then tries to ask a raven about salt bears. This first journey ends on a night of full moon on top of the Coke Oven monoliths as a sky-full of ravens circle in silver moonlight above his head. There he meets the oldest ravens alive who terrify him with their strange behavior of weirding prophecies. Thomas Davis has created an adventure story in the tradition of Watership Down or Wind in the Willows. As three friends go off into a wilderness toward the Gooseneck Country of Eastern Utah, they not only have to cross high mountains and rivers, but they also find themselves struggling through a landscape filled with terror and death and the madness of a great grizzly bear and mountain lion. In the end Salt Bear finds out who he is. Buddy and Old Rombo, the cactus buck, also discover the magic of who they are in a classic tale of the American west. A widely published poet Davis's language sings with powerful descriptions and memorable scenes designed to engage any reader who still has adventure in their bones and a feeling of excitement about who they might be in life. James Janko, winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Prize for the Novel and numerous other literary awards, has said of Davis's writing that "Here you will find language and story that mesmerize the reader, that transport one to places where words and stories are born." This is Young Adult literature at its finest. With moments of humor as well as adventure, it will appeal to those who are on the cusp of their life's journey, whose imaginations dance when they are stimulated to think about who they are and what they might become.