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Julia Phillips, whose bestselling debut novel, “Disappearing Earth,” was a National Book Award finalist, returns with “Bear” (Hogarth), a hypnotic, tense story about sisters on an island off the coast of Washington whose lives are upended by the presence of a bear near their home.
Read an excerpt below.
“Bear” by Julia Phillips
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“You won’t Believe what we saw from the boat tonight,” she told Elena, who was at the sink washing the day’s dishes. It was late, and Elena’s shift had ended hours earlier, but she always waited up for Sam. Elena had brought home from the golf club leftover chili con carne, and Sam was picking at it, shredded cheddar and green onion. Their mother was in her room sleeping. “Will you guess?”
The woods around their house were silent and black. Thick with hawthorn, which grew dark fruit, and Douglas fir. A yellow gleam at the edge of the kitchen window marked the presence of their closest neighbors, the Larsens, who had spotlights tastefully illuminating their landscaping, and who gave too- polite greetings to the girls whenever they bumped into each other in town. Danny Larsen, their youngest son, had asked Elena to homecoming senior year. His mother shut that down immediately.
Elena said, “A dead body.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Sam said. Put down her fork. “Would I talk like this if we saw a body?”
“I don’t know. You get worked up over the weirdest stuff.” Elena pushed her hair from her cheek with one wet wrist. “A whale.”
“We see whales all the time. Guess again.”
“A sea lion.”
Sam rolled her eyes. And though she was behind her sister’s back, Elena couldn’t see her, Elena still seemed to know. The movement must have been felt. So Elena was already on to the next guess: “A merman.”
“You’re never going to get it. A bear!”
“No way.”
“A huge bear! Swimming in the channel!”
Sam had seen it herself: the wet, furred hump of the animal’s back, the line of its neck, its pointed nose and small round ears. The water was silver and the sky was dimming blue, and the creature, against those colors, was a dark spot, but the last light in the air outlined its form, made it clear and shocking and strange. The tourists called out to each other in delight. Exclamations in English, Spanish, Chinese. One of them tossed something in the water toward it, and another passenger scolded them. The ferry chugged on, but for a few minutes, long odd ones, the boat and the bear were side by side, pushing forward, abandoning the mainland together, heading out toward the night. The captain even made an announcement over the intercom so anyone sitting inside could come see for themselves. The bear’s lifted head. Its slicked shoulders. The widening ripples it left behind. It did not look in their direction as it paddled determinedly on.
Elena was drying the plates now, stacking them in the cupboards. “Where in the channel? You don’t think it could reach us, do you?”
“Between Shaw and Lopez.” Sam was tickled by the question. “Why? Are you scared?”
“Of bears?”
“Of scary bears?”
“You’re not?”
“No way.” What was Sam afraid of? Withering away here. Dreaming of chances she’d never be able to take, and shriveling up from that denial, getting poorer and put under more pressure and pushed even farther from the rest of the world. Compared to those fears, getting mauled by a bear seemed a delight.
Elena turned back to the sink. “Our brave girl.”
“How was your day?”
“Fine. No wildlife. Unless you count Bert Greenwood coming in drunk at noon.”
“That’s not unusual, I guess.”
“More of a whale than a bear,” Elena said.
Her hands were under the faucet. Her face was tipped down, making her neck stretch long and the bones bump up at her nape. “Want me to do the pots?” Sam asked.
Elena shook her head. “It’s no problem. Keep talking.”
From the book “Bear” by Julia Phillips. Copyright © 2024 by Julia Phillips. Publishing by Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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