Rescue of Josh McGuire

Ben Mikaelsen

This is a book that comes desperately close to greatness, but manages to shoot itself in the foot at every turn. Ben Mikaelsen has a message to impart, by god, and such things as plot and characterization will not get in his way. That way, of course, lies madness.

Josh McGuire's father, on a hunting trip, shoots a bear that turn out to be a nursing mother. Josh rescues the cub, and the two of them take it home, but his father informs him that when the authorities find out, they'll take it, and it will most likely end up either at the rendering plant or used for medical experimentation. Josh decides that the only way he can save the cub's life is to take it into the wilderness, and hide from society with it until it's full grown.

Obviously, there's a lot to work with here, even when you don't factor in the subplot having to do with Josh's dead brother and the way his brother's death affected the family. Unfortunately, however, the story never gets in the way of Mikaelsen's relentless activism. Mikaelsen is unwilling at any point to let his story, which is pretty unambiguous even without the preaching, get the point across; he has to stop at every juncture he can and lecture us, or have one of his characters lecture us, about the evils of the current bear-hunting laws. The only saving grace to this is that Mikaelsen did, at least, realize that if he was going to write a book, there would have to be at least a thin veneer of story, and that story is interesting enough when he allows it to unfold. If onoly there had been more of that and less lecturing.