NATIONAL BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE 2025 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION - FINALIST FOR THE 2026 BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK COMPETITION - Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail - CBC - Spotify - The Hill TimesIn this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron confronts the rare genetic mutation that gave her cancer by investigating an equally rare and terrifying event--a predatory bear attack.

>Years later, with children of her own, Cameron was diagnosed with the same kind of deadly skin cancer as her father. Caught in a second wave of grief, she was told by her doctor, "the ideal exposure to UV light is none." No longer able to venture into the wilderness as she once had, she again became obsessed with the bear attack in Algonquin Park. How could terror rip through such a beautiful place? Could she separate truth from fiction? She headed north to investigate. Seamlessly weaving together nature writing with true crime investigation in this unflinching account of recovery, How to Survive a Bear Attack is at once an intimate portrait of an extraordinary animal, a bracing chronicle of pain, obsession, and love, and a profoundly moving exploration of how we can understand and survive the wildness that lives inside us.