about the book
Grampa Gene called it pruning. It involved downing a whole bottle of sludgy prune juice, watching an episode of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and then racing for the one and only bathroom in the house. Gramps beat me to the bathroom, but he cheated. Luckily, with butt cheeks clenched, I ran for the neighbor’s bathroom, but, man, it was a Cat-5 when I finally made it!
Gramps always pruned before he went hunting. Claims it puts hair on your chest. It just made me feel completely cleaned out. But I’ll do anything Gramps says just so I can join him on an elk hunting trip to the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It’ll be my first hunt and will put me on the road to manhood. By the way, my name is Tyson. I am thirteen.
After my dad lost his job, he, my mom Ashley, and I moved in with Gramps. I love this old Colorado house, and Gramps is the best. Seventy-seven and a real character, he still wears his cowboy hat everywhere and will dance with any lady, young, old, fat, or frail. But his big thing is hunting, and he is teaching me everything he knows. I’m an awesome shot with the video game controller!
Things haven’t been going so good for me lately, so I am really looking forward to the trip. I haven’t talked to my best friend since July. He is now a football jock and hanging with the A-crowd. The girl I’m crushing on doesn’t even know I exist. My grades are the pits and the Rents have been mightily intrusive about the matter. And Ashley, well, she’s just been annoying lately. I don’t have anyone else to bum around with, and I don’t want to get guff about being dorky or about my interest in Taylor Swift, so Gramps is my only friend.
And then Dad lays in on me—NO HUNTING TRIP!!! They are sending Gramps to an assisted living facility three hours away because his kidneys aren’t working so good. Dad also claims there are bear problems at the park. Neither Gramps nor I are ready to toss in the towel. This trip is a GO even if it means telling my parents a big fat lie.
But, folks, I sure wasn’t ready for the blood and gore of field dressing a 600-pound elk…or running into Sandy, a very big, very angry, very hungry man-eating grizzly!
about the author
Ryan Gebhart was born and raised in Maumee, Ohio. He claims he went straight from reading Go Dog Go to reading novels by Stephen King and Michael Crichton. In reality, there were a few books in between.
It’s just that fifth grade was such a magical year for him. That year he read Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Ryan was blown away by how the author turned the absurd concept of a dinosaur-themed amusement park into such a wonderful story. From the moment he read the first page, Ryan knew he was going to be an author, too. Fifth grade was also the year Mrs. Virost, his teacher, introduced the class to creative writing.
Ryan studied Spanish at Ohio University, and while he was working on his master’s, wrote to counteract all the boring hours studying for exams. From there, Ryan’s life got a little crazy. He held over twenty-one different jobs. He studied and worked in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Ecuador. He played the piano and was commissioned as an artist. He made smoothies and rewired entire houses. He also field dressed a 600-pound elk. It’s this last job that inspired the book There Will Be Bears, his debut novel.
When Ryan was 27, a friend got him a gig working on a hunting ranch in Wyoming in the Grand Tetons. All of a sudden he found himself riding horses, hunting in the wilderness, shooting guns, hacking up meat, and facing real, live grizzly bears. For a very long time, he had this inkling of a story about breaking a grandpa out of a nursing home. Now he had lots of guns, blood, and bears to make the story complete. After leaving Wyoming, he returned to Ohio and spent the next four months writing There Will Be Bears. It took Ryan another two and a half years to revise it, find an agent and publisher, and get it onto the book shelves. Before Bears, he wrote five novels that got nowhere and he still claims that he has a lot to learn about the whole process.
Sources :
Author biography: Pickerington Public Library
Author interview: One Four Kid Lit
Author interview: The Greenhouse
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