An isolated village designed to offer protection to those needing to disappear can be a paradise or a prison, as Kelley Armstrong (The Deepest of Secrets; Wherever She Goes) explores in the engrossing The Boy Who Cried Bear. Married couple Sheriff Eric Dalton and Detective Casey Duncan manage Haven's Rock. It's a sanctuary deep in the Yukon for carefully vetted residents: some have been criminals and others, victims of violence. All of them seek a safe place, and many assume fake names to shed their previous lives. The dense woods mask the closeness of wildlife and other settlements, such as a nearby mining operation.
The Boy Who Cried Bear skillfully melds a village mystery with a high adventure and acutely explores its numerous characters. The heart of the story is two brothers: teenager Carson and 10-year-old Max, who arrived with their mother, Dana, and are the first children at Haven's Rock. They are full of guilt and grief after having just seen their mother injured and their father killed while in witness protection. Their ennui at being forced to a remote area mirrors the adults' restlessness.
During a group hike, Max believes a bear with "human eyes" is stalking them. Mindful of the village's safety, Casey and Eric organize a hunt. The urgency to find the bear accelerates when one of the children is kidnapped and a murder occurs in the forest. Sightings of a man dressed in a bearskin add to residents' fears that the outside world is intruding. The Boy Who Cried Bear illustrates how easily a civilized society can succumb to the wilderness. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer