Down From The Mountain : The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear

An "ode to wildness and wilderness" (Outside Magazine), Down from the Mountain tells the story of one grizzly bear in the changing Montana landscape. Millie was cunning, a fiercely protective mother to her cubs. But raising those cubs in the mountains was hard, as the climate warmed and people crowded the valleys. There were obvious dangers, like poachers, and subtle ones, like the cornfield that drew her into sure trouble.

That trouble is where award-winning writer, farmer, and conservationist Bryce Andrews's story intersects with Millie's. In this welcome and impressive work, he shows how this drama lies at the core of a major problem in the rural American West—the conflict between large predatory animals and invasive modern settlers, an entangled collision where the shrinking wilds force human and bear into ever closer proximity.

Through Millie's life, death, and cubs, Andrews reveals what the changing character of the American West means for the wild creatures who call it home—a story deeply informed by personal experience and made all the stronger by compassion and measured insight.