I’m thrilled to announce that my new memoir, Tamed by a Bear: Coming Home to Nature-Spirit-Self, has been accepted by Counterpoint Press in Berkeley! The book will come out in early July.

My editor at Counterpoint, Jack Shoemaker, says this about the book:

I’ve been moved by Bear. It’s as attractive a description of our still small voice as I’ve read. I think the narrative is lovely and loving.

How the book came about

This memoir poured onto the page. I got bit by the writing bug in the spring and started on what I thought was the first chapter. But that chapter stretched and stretched, shaping itself into a full story line. In only nine weeks I had 200 pages filled with the details of one year. One transformative year, 2013, when I opened to conversing with spirit in the form of my Helper, Bear.

I was only deepening my relationship with nature, but the process sent me in directions that at first dismayed me. It meant dismantling the wall that I didn’t even know I had, the wall in the mind that modern people build between “nature” and “spirit,” matter and spirit. It meant being willing to travel lighter—freer of misperceptions, freer to enjoy life. Could I learn to trust even a teensy bit more in the mysterious workings of an unfathomable Universe?

The process was trickier than I expected, and way funnier too. Who knew that a sometimes-uncomfortable spiritual transformation could keep you laughing as well?

Going into the spring catalog

Here is how Counterpoint will describe the book in their spring catalog:

In an age of materialism, language of spirit or spirits seems at best suspect and at worst alien or naïve. When Priscilla Stuckey begins hearing Bear’s voice, she is a writer and religious studies professor in her fifties. Though she enjoys communing with trees and birds and land, she intellectually knows better than to try talking directly with spirit. Yet searching for the truth of her own identity leads her directly toward what she is most skeptical of. As Priscilla opens to her spirit animal helper and his affectionate, jovial wisdom, she begins to realize the slow dawning of faith. Tamed by a Bear shows one person responding to the call of her heart, which is also the call of Earth to all human beings today: to listen to a more-than-human wisdom so people can address the social and environmental crises facing the world.

At this moment when the future of life on Earth as we know it hangs in the balance—threatened by climate change, species extinctions, and extreme economic inequality—the key to survival lies in answering one question: How can humans live more peaceably and sustainably with the rest of nature? The heart-opening conversations between Bear and Priscilla suggest a reinvigorating of nature spirituality in everyday life. . . .

In simple, down-to-earth language, Priscilla shows how a spiritual path of relationship with Earth can unfold for those who are willing to listen. Readers who might identify as “spiritual, not religious,” who wish to connect more deeply with nature, or who may be discontent with the mechanistic view of nature but have not yet found an intellectually trustworthy way to pursue nature spirituality will find deep resonance within Tamed by a Bear.

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