The Loneliest Polar Bear

A True Story of Survival and Peril on the Edge of a Warming World

Kale Williams author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Little, Brown Book Group

Published:23rd Mar '21

Should be back in stock very soon

The Loneliest Polar Bear cover

The heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of an abandoned polar bear cub named Nora and the humans working tirelessly to save her and her species, whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is closely tied to our own.

Six days after giving birth, a polar bear named Aurora got up and left her den at the Columbus Zoo, leaving her tiny, squealing cub to fend for herself. Hours later, Aurora still hadn't returned. The cub was furless and blind, and with her temperature dropping dangerously, the zookeepers entrusted with her care felt they had no choice: They would have to raise one of the most dangerous predators in the world themselves, by hand. Over the next few weeks, a group of veterinarians and zookeepers would work around the clock to save the cub, whom they called Nora.

Humans rarely get as close to a polar bear as Nora's keepers got with their fuzzy charge. But the two species have long been intertwined. Three decades before Nora's birth, her father, Nanuq, was orphaned when an Inupiat hunter killed his mother, leaving Nanuq to be sent to a zoo. That hunter, Gene Agnaboogok, now faces some of the same threats as the wild bears near his Alaskan village of Wales, on the westernmost tip of the North American continent. As sea ice diminishes and temperatures creep up year-after-year, Gene and the polar bears--and everyone and everything else living in the far north--are being forced to adapt. Not all of them will succeed.

Sweeping and tender, The Loneliest Polar Bear explores the fraught relationship humans have with the natural world, the exploitative and sinister causes of the environmental mess we find ourselves in, and how the fate of polar bears is not theirs alone.

This page-turner is sure to captivate animal lovers, nature enthusiasts, and anyone looking for a touching story. * Publishers Weekly *
Excellent * Independent *
Most engaging * Daily Mail *
The book brilliantly weaves in the real-life story of captive polar bear Nora and the effects of global warming ... be prepared to shed a tear or two. * thehoneycombers.com *
Through his captivating account of the life of Nora, a zoo-bred-and-born polar bear abandoned by her mother, Williams cuts the monumental crisis of global warming down to irresistible size. * South China Morning Post *

ISBN: 9780751578416

Dimensions: 236mm x 162mm x 30mm

Weight: 540g

288 pages