Down From The Mountain

Down from the Mountain follows a single grizzly bear, Millie, through the shifting landscape of Montana. The book traces her life, her death, and the cubs she raised, using her story to show what is happening to the American West. Millie was clever and devoted to her young, but raising them in the high country grew harder as the climate warmed and settlers spread into the valleys. Poachers posed an obvious threat, while quieter hazards, such as a cornfield that lured her into serious danger, posed another.

The author, Bryce Andrews, is a farmer and conservationist whose writing has won recognition, and his own path crosses Millie's at the point where that danger takes hold. He uses the bears' struggle to examine a wider conflict in rural western America, where large predators and newcomers who have remade the land compete for space. As the wild places shrink, people and bears are pushed into ever closer contact.