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Crooked Tree
When, in Michigan's Crooked Tree State Forest, bears suddenly attack humans with gruesome ferocity, the Ottawa Indians begin speaking of a malevolent intelligence controlling the bears, and Axel Michelson tries to save his life and his Indian wife's soul.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1980
16 people are currently reading
521 people want to read
About the author
Robert C. Wilson
19 books7 followersHorror author
**Not to be confused with the SF writer, Robert Charles Wilson**
**Not to be confused with the SF writer, Robert Charles Wilson**
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
December 19, 2013
This book terrified me when my sister gave it to me as Christmas present in 1980! We had a wood stove in our family room in Maryland (not Michigan - didn't matter) and I remember going out to get a load of wood for the stove after dark. I'd been so engrossed in the book that when I heard a noise in the woods I totally freaked, dropped the wood and ran into the house, locked the door and sat in the cold the rest of the night. Oh, but I did finish the freaky book. This is one of the best thrillers I've read - and that is from an old librarian!
Thirty one years later, I still can remember so many parts of this book. Being that I read a couple hundred books a year, that is something! Need a good fright - this is it!
Thirty one years later, I still can remember so many parts of this book. Being that I read a couple hundred books a year, that is something! Need a good fright - this is it!
January 13, 2015
4 out of 5 stars.
My mom recommended this book to me. She said it freaked her out when she read it. I can't say it freaked me out or scared me so much. It did hold my interest.
I was more interested in the Indian folklore and legends of the Ottawa tribe. I don't know if the Bearwalk legend or The Feast of the Dead ritual are true or not,I researched it and didn't come up with much. I know the Ottawa were very real.
The story is based in Northern Michigan, and the Crooked Tree State Forest. People are being killed by bears in the state forest and many believe it is the Bearwalk legend, as the victims tounges have been removed.
Axel and Janis live in the forest and are deeply affected, especially Janis. What is happening to her, is she a part of what is happening? Most definitely, but how? Axel goes in search of how to stop the madness. Will he succeed??
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My mom recommended this book to me. She said it freaked her out when she read it. I can't say it freaked me out or scared me so much. It did hold my interest.
I was more interested in the Indian folklore and legends of the Ottawa tribe. I don't know if the Bearwalk legend or The Feast of the Dead ritual are true or not,I researched it and didn't come up with much. I know the Ottawa were very real.
The story is based in Northern Michigan, and the Crooked Tree State Forest. People are being killed by bears in the state forest and many believe it is the Bearwalk legend, as the victims tounges have been removed.
Axel and Janis live in the forest and are deeply affected, especially Janis. What is happening to her, is she a part of what is happening? Most definitely, but how? Axel goes in search of how to stop the madness. Will he succeed??
You can also follow my reviews at the following links:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2...
http://lisasandberg88.wordpress.com/
http://thezeroshour.com/
https://m.facebook.com/lisa.sandberg8...
https://m.facebook.com/thezeroshour?r...
http://1988lisa1988.tumblr.com/
Twitter - @1988Lisa1988
http://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/A1NU...
January 9, 2015
Normally I am not drawn to stories of spirit possession from the dark side. I prefer to keep my mind in the Light. That said, what did attract me to this book was the Native American legend that is woven throughout this tale along with the setting of the Michigan wilderness. I did not feel fear or frightened in any way as many of the other reviewers noted. If there is anything here to be afraid of it's the human element of fear that can turn rational, logical people into a blood thirsty possee led by one man and the cowardice of those who go along rather than stand up for their own beliefs. I am grateful that the author does not use graphic detail to shock but rather allows the reader to form his own mental images. Very well written. A good read.
June 9, 2012
I read this book more than 30 years ago and I still remember it. It scared the hell out of me and I'm not prone to that sort of reaction. I've spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods (one of my favorite restaurants is Legs Inn; one of my top-five all-time places I love to be is the shoreline above Cross Village) so I really identified with the characters and could see and smell the locations. This novel became a family favorite -- we passed it around until it fell apart and we had to buy a new one.
September 15, 2011
Crooked Tree was one of the best horror books I've ever read. Mr. Wilson is one hell of a writer who describes details and scenes so well, you feel you're there. The bear attack in the opening scene was so vivid and scary AND REALISTIC it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. This is a thick book - and I read it in only a few sittings. I thought there was a Crooked Tree movie in the works and was disappointed to learn it wasn't going to happen.
February 20, 2020
4.3 stars!
Crooked Tree made the woods unsafe again! Freaky scary bear attacks. Native American mythology. A Lake Superior woodland wilderness horror story dunked in the cultural politics of Northern Exposure. No joke, this novel will scare you.
Welcome addition to any serious horror collection.
Crooked Tree made the woods unsafe again! Freaky scary bear attacks. Native American mythology. A Lake Superior woodland wilderness horror story dunked in the cultural politics of Northern Exposure. No joke, this novel will scare you.
Welcome addition to any serious horror collection.
April 11, 2013
I thought this book was pretty good. I especially loved the Indian legend. A little slow at some parts, but it had enough flow to keep me intrigued. The descriptions were too wordy for me at times, but a very enjoyable read overall.
September 23, 2023
This was a really good folklore story. Lots of people bite the dust and nobody is safe. There were a couple of incidents that really disturbed me, but none involving people, I am a horror fan after all and quite used to that. In conclusion, it was a bit brutal but very interesting.
December 7, 2008
A pretty good book set in wild lands. I'm a sucker for horror stories that take place in the woods. This one involves an Indian Legend.
December 14, 2022
A year or so before I finally succumbed to Goodreads, I sent several horror novel reviews to friends and family under the general banner of “Mass Market Mayhem.” Since I’ve already met my goal for the year (so it doesn’t feel like cheating), I’ve decided to copy those reviews here. I’ve edited them only lightly.
Mass Market Mayhem — Episode Three
After The Freakshow, I started to feel like the old Dorchester Leisure horror paperbacks were killing off too many brain cells, so I took a break and read some H.G. Wells and then a few play scripts (New York always makes me want to read plays).
Then I decided to return to mass market — it's summer, after all — but moved up a level in terms of quality ... maybe. I think each of the titles in the queue for July started as hardcovers, but really only found their groove once they hit the paperback racks. Does a hardcover birth guarantee a better book? Let's find out.
Crooked Tree by Robert C. Wilson
First, one of the great mass market horror covers ever. Just tell me you could stumble across that cover staring out at you from some drugstore paperback rack (when such things still existed) and fail to at least give the book a closer look. And then that inset!
Sigh. Remember when even cheesy horror paperbacks had embossed foil lettering and die-cut covers with elaborate, lurid inset artwork? (For a crazy-great summation of those days, pick up Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of 70s and 80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix. Fantastic book.)
The pitch: Real bears and a sort of Native American werebear threaten real estate development in Michigan — Jaws meets Grizzly meets John Grisham.
Wilson is predominantly a lawyer now, as near as I can tell; I tried to acquire the e-book rights to Crooked Tree at one point, but he didn't have any interest in digital publishing, or at least in my offer. He did allow his alma mater to do a small paper run around the same time, but the book is once again out of print. It shouldn’t be.
The book is extremely methodical, laying out its extremely linear plot in an extremely lawyerly manner, beat by beat by beat. Which probably sounds like a slam, but that's not how I mean it at all. It's a novel in which you can sort of see the writer learning how to write a novel as he goes, and the deliberateness and linearity actually help some of the more supernatural elements seem more plausible.
Basically, a young lawyer is trying to help the local Ottawa Indian community fight real estate developers who want to do the usual white man thing — pave paradise and put up a parking lot or something to that effect. As he's working through the courts, a more supernatural presence is fighting its own battle: a long-dead Indian spirit is possessing the local bear population, causing it to attack and kill a fair number of both locals and tourists, AND manipulating a human familiar to follow the bears and mutilate the already mutilated victims further. It's complicated.
I think a more seasoned novelist would have tied those two elements together in a more organic and satisfying way; as it is, they seem largely independent of one another for most of the book, except by implication. And a good editor would have tightened the whole thing by eighty or a hundred pages, especially in those spots where Wilson is clearly just trying to find his way out of some swamp and onto his next predetermined beat. A particularly flabby example:
Page 178 - [Axel] was in a hurry to get home.
Page 179 - "I'm in no hurry," Axel said.
Page 180 - [Axel] knew he had to hurry.
All of the above within a scene that doesn't actually need to exist in the first place, but a good example of how Wilson wrote this novel moment by moment, and never quite figured out that you don't always need to go from a to b to c; sometimes you can jump right from a to c and the reader will be just fine.
I'm trashing it more than I mean to; it's really a pretty decent book. There are effective scares, decent character moments, and Wilson seems to have done his research. The bear stuff, the Indian stuff, the legal stuff, the Michigan stuff — all seem legit (I have no idea if they are, but he sells them pretty well). His Ottawa characters seem a little more entwined within the white community than seems likely for 1977 ... but who knows, maybe that part of Michigan was more woke forty years ago than I would have guessed.
A couple of the big reveals are a little too telegraphed to be effective and thus feel like they should have a big "dunh dunh DUNH" stinger on the soundtrack, but that's actually more fun than annoying.
There aren't any overt similarities to The Forsaken Boy, but I'm sure the general atmosphere leaked into my brain back in the 70s and played some little part in the eventual development of my own book. There's certainly more overt cultural appropriation than there was (I hope) in The Forsaken Boy, and definitely more white savior syndrome, but that's true of a lot of horror from that era. I can only think of a single Native American horror novel written by an actual Native American (Indigenous Person?) and that's Crota by Owl Goingback.
Side note: damn, I wish I had a name as cool as Owl Goingback.
(2022 addendum: When I wrote this, I had not yet discovered Stephen Graham Jones.)
Crooked Tree grade: low B-minus, although a good edit could probably bring it up to a B. Not one of the great horror novels of my life, but at least parts of it have a place somewhere down there on one of the lower shelves.
The prose is generally unremarkable, solid and workmanlike, but I did particularly appreciate the atmosphere of certain paragraphs like this one:
“The black bear is plantigrade, like man, with the heel and ball of the foot touching the ground... Looking closely at the tracks around the corpse, it could be imagined that the soft black dirt held the imprint of a naked human foot.”
Dunh dunh DUNH!
Mass Market Mayhem — Episode Three
After The Freakshow, I started to feel like the old Dorchester Leisure horror paperbacks were killing off too many brain cells, so I took a break and read some H.G. Wells and then a few play scripts (New York always makes me want to read plays).
Then I decided to return to mass market — it's summer, after all — but moved up a level in terms of quality ... maybe. I think each of the titles in the queue for July started as hardcovers, but really only found their groove once they hit the paperback racks. Does a hardcover birth guarantee a better book? Let's find out.
Crooked Tree by Robert C. Wilson
First, one of the great mass market horror covers ever. Just tell me you could stumble across that cover staring out at you from some drugstore paperback rack (when such things still existed) and fail to at least give the book a closer look. And then that inset!
Sigh. Remember when even cheesy horror paperbacks had embossed foil lettering and die-cut covers with elaborate, lurid inset artwork? (For a crazy-great summation of those days, pick up Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of 70s and 80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix. Fantastic book.)
The pitch: Real bears and a sort of Native American werebear threaten real estate development in Michigan — Jaws meets Grizzly meets John Grisham.
Wilson is predominantly a lawyer now, as near as I can tell; I tried to acquire the e-book rights to Crooked Tree at one point, but he didn't have any interest in digital publishing, or at least in my offer. He did allow his alma mater to do a small paper run around the same time, but the book is once again out of print. It shouldn’t be.
The book is extremely methodical, laying out its extremely linear plot in an extremely lawyerly manner, beat by beat by beat. Which probably sounds like a slam, but that's not how I mean it at all. It's a novel in which you can sort of see the writer learning how to write a novel as he goes, and the deliberateness and linearity actually help some of the more supernatural elements seem more plausible.
Basically, a young lawyer is trying to help the local Ottawa Indian community fight real estate developers who want to do the usual white man thing — pave paradise and put up a parking lot or something to that effect. As he's working through the courts, a more supernatural presence is fighting its own battle: a long-dead Indian spirit is possessing the local bear population, causing it to attack and kill a fair number of both locals and tourists, AND manipulating a human familiar to follow the bears and mutilate the already mutilated victims further. It's complicated.
I think a more seasoned novelist would have tied those two elements together in a more organic and satisfying way; as it is, they seem largely independent of one another for most of the book, except by implication. And a good editor would have tightened the whole thing by eighty or a hundred pages, especially in those spots where Wilson is clearly just trying to find his way out of some swamp and onto his next predetermined beat. A particularly flabby example:
Page 178 - [Axel] was in a hurry to get home.
Page 179 - "I'm in no hurry," Axel said.
Page 180 - [Axel] knew he had to hurry.
All of the above within a scene that doesn't actually need to exist in the first place, but a good example of how Wilson wrote this novel moment by moment, and never quite figured out that you don't always need to go from a to b to c; sometimes you can jump right from a to c and the reader will be just fine.
I'm trashing it more than I mean to; it's really a pretty decent book. There are effective scares, decent character moments, and Wilson seems to have done his research. The bear stuff, the Indian stuff, the legal stuff, the Michigan stuff — all seem legit (I have no idea if they are, but he sells them pretty well). His Ottawa characters seem a little more entwined within the white community than seems likely for 1977 ... but who knows, maybe that part of Michigan was more woke forty years ago than I would have guessed.
A couple of the big reveals are a little too telegraphed to be effective and thus feel like they should have a big "dunh dunh DUNH" stinger on the soundtrack, but that's actually more fun than annoying.
There aren't any overt similarities to The Forsaken Boy, but I'm sure the general atmosphere leaked into my brain back in the 70s and played some little part in the eventual development of my own book. There's certainly more overt cultural appropriation than there was (I hope) in The Forsaken Boy, and definitely more white savior syndrome, but that's true of a lot of horror from that era. I can only think of a single Native American horror novel written by an actual Native American (Indigenous Person?) and that's Crota by Owl Goingback.
Side note: damn, I wish I had a name as cool as Owl Goingback.
(2022 addendum: When I wrote this, I had not yet discovered Stephen Graham Jones.)
Crooked Tree grade: low B-minus, although a good edit could probably bring it up to a B. Not one of the great horror novels of my life, but at least parts of it have a place somewhere down there on one of the lower shelves.
The prose is generally unremarkable, solid and workmanlike, but I did particularly appreciate the atmosphere of certain paragraphs like this one:
“The black bear is plantigrade, like man, with the heel and ball of the foot touching the ground... Looking closely at the tracks around the corpse, it could be imagined that the soft black dirt held the imprint of a naked human foot.”
Dunh dunh DUNH!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2025
I was given this book. The heart of bear walk story got me through to the end. However, the author is bad. There is so much drudgery that it makes me think this guy really thinks he’s talented. The book could have been a third of its size and been much more enjoyable. It reads like a pseudo-screenplay. Vignette-ish. Too many characters. Too much back patting for the undeveloped characters and not enough mystery. Random characters that pop into the middle of a scene. People are called out by first names in one sentence and by their last names in the next sentence, within sequences that are long and filled with other characters being called out the same confusing way, making it near impossible to follow who’s doing what. There are looong sequences of indiscernible word salad. Much time spent on topics that exist for no reason - like the lawsuit- why? It was pointless. A bunch of pages devoted to the building of a sweat lodge that lead to a stupidly long and unnecessary subplot within the sweat lodge. If I read one more line about people driving inadequate vehicles dumbly down logging roads I was gonna be the one screaming. Or the constant repetitive descriptions of the bear’s inner dialogue and their senses. It went on and on every time the bears were brought into the storyline! Much skimming is required of the reader. There is dog slaughter and dog abuse too. Why wasn’t Deputy Shank murdered by a bear? Why have a long needless chapter about this hateful man if you’re not gonna at least have him killed off? What about Janis’ fingerprints?! Where did that go? I hate big suspense plots conveniently discarded because the author is not clever enough to wrap them up.
December 23, 2023
I read this novel before several years ago. It was (and is) one of the few sources available to read about the folkloric bearwalk, an American Indian monster. In the setting of this novel, the bearwalk is the spirit of a long deceased Native American who has suddenly come back to start black bear attacks in the fictional Crooked Tree forest in Michigan. The protagonist, Axel Michelson, must figure out what’s happening and put an end to it.
As I note in my blog post about it (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), Crooked Tree would probably be considered cultural appropriation these days. White authors shouldn’t be telling the stories of those of other races and cultures. (Some of us handle this in fiction by not describing the race of characters at all.) In any case, this is an effective horror novel, at least in the first half or so.
It seems the last time I read it I felt it was effective throughout. This time I felt a bit more uncomfortable with Axel being the one who single-handedly (almost) solves the problem of the bearwalk by researching and performing an American Indian ceremony. The book is a period piece and it involves a story not frequently told. With that outlook it’s an escapist read that may keep you out of the woods for a while.
As I note in my blog post about it (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), Crooked Tree would probably be considered cultural appropriation these days. White authors shouldn’t be telling the stories of those of other races and cultures. (Some of us handle this in fiction by not describing the race of characters at all.) In any case, this is an effective horror novel, at least in the first half or so.
It seems the last time I read it I felt it was effective throughout. This time I felt a bit more uncomfortable with Axel being the one who single-handedly (almost) solves the problem of the bearwalk by researching and performing an American Indian ceremony. The book is a period piece and it involves a story not frequently told. With that outlook it’s an escapist read that may keep you out of the woods for a while.
November 8, 2024
Better than most horror cheapies from this era. The Ottawa mythology is a nice spin (though I have no idea how much of it is based on actual myths), and Wilson's experience as a newly graduated law student adds some heft to the descriptions of Alex's and Larry's daily work.
The bear passages felt a little tedious after a while (they're short, but nearly identical and don't seem to serve much purpose after Wilson reveals what's going on), and Janice's character is pretty flat (she's mostly there to serve a purpose). All in all, though, it's not bad. It held my attention and was a fun read I started during a long weekend in the woods of Maine.
Echoing one previous reviewer who said this book feels like a 70s made-for-TV horror movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The bear passages felt a little tedious after a while (they're short, but nearly identical and don't seem to serve much purpose after Wilson reveals what's going on), and Janice's character is pretty flat (she's mostly there to serve a purpose). All in all, though, it's not bad. It held my attention and was a fun read I started during a long weekend in the woods of Maine.
Echoing one previous reviewer who said this book feels like a 70s made-for-TV horror movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
February 15, 2025
Stand back cover art, black bears attacking humans, the restless soul of an evil shaman manifesting in Janis' mind, growing terror in the small village of Crooked Tree. Can Michael save his wife and send the evil spirit back to hell? Great Indian horror full of mythology, well researched and nicely plotted. The author knows to build up an eerie atmosphere and we have a long extremely intense final. Tension to the last page. Absolutely enjoyed this savage blast from the past and can highly recommend it!
December 18, 2019
I got this book in a box of mainly 80s horror novels years ago. That box had some real gems and some duds. Crooked Tree is in the middle somewhere. It has an interesting plot; basically, black bears in Michigan start killing people apparently at random. Does it have something to do with Ottawa folklore? Can it be stopped? Unfortunately, the writing is kinda clunky and the dialogue stilted at best. It was interesting enough to finish, however. 2.5 stars rounded up.
October 5, 2019
The premise is interesting enough and there are engaging action sequences, but the DIALOGUE! It's so incredibly stiff!! Every character sounds virtually identical and speaks as though they are fully aware they're characters in a book! I almost got a headache from rolling my eyes so often. Sorry, but this just ruined it for me...
May 23, 2017
The storyline bounced around frequently, leaving me to backtrack quite often to find reference (or not)...trying to make sense of it. A few flat references to my home state of Michigan, thrown in without narrative or description.
April 12, 2019
This book took way too long building up the premise and it was all very predictable but at least it was a bit more enjoyable as the action really got going. Not sure why this one stuck in the back of my mind all these years, though.
January 9, 2021
A great setting & premise for a horror novel that never quite gets off the ground. There are no memorable characters and the story moves slow and in a confusing manner. Wished and hoped for so much more
February 9, 2021
Decently fun, scary ride. An evil, long dead Native American shaman spirit possesses bears to terrorize rural northern Michigan. It’s fun the way 70s “B”horror flicks like “It’s Alive” and “The Manitou” are fun. Just go along with the ride.
November 29, 2018
Creepy...very very creepy!
June 9, 2021
Pretty good, pretty creepy, some scary bear horror.
Read
November 1, 2021Bad dialogue, poor grammar & inaccurate facts all in the first 40 pages. Pass
July 8, 2022
Boring, too many characters, slow plot.
September 24, 2023
This was a bit of a slow start but once the bear attacks started it turned out to be a great read.
April 18, 2024
Creepy book!
June 14, 2024
Absolutely one of my very favorite books! I've read this book so many times over the years since its release. I will never get tired of it. Highly recommend!
August 24, 2025
This was a great read. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough throughout most of the book and had a hard time putting it down when I got the chance to read it.
August 22, 2014
I wanted to so badly to like Crooked Tree. Ok, maybe I picked it up based on the cover. (Giant bear-person eating someone? Yes!) But I read great reviews, too.
Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. The characters felt very flat, and despite some initial promising connections to Native American lore, it all fell through. It read like a made-for-tv movie- some gory scenes, too much conversation that went nowhere, not enough respect for the characters.
The story painted both Native Americans and women as 'other'. Those characters were written poorly, and the main (white male) character was set up as the obvious hero. I couldn't connect with the protagonist at all. He just bumbled through the events going on around him, ignorant and arrogant, then ended up superior despite all that.
Frankly, I would have liked it a lot better if everyone was just eaten by bears.
Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. The characters felt very flat, and despite some initial promising connections to Native American lore, it all fell through. It read like a made-for-tv movie- some gory scenes, too much conversation that went nowhere, not enough respect for the characters.
The story painted both Native Americans and women as 'other'. Those characters were written poorly, and the main (white male) character was set up as the obvious hero. I couldn't connect with the protagonist at all. He just bumbled through the events going on around him, ignorant and arrogant, then ended up superior despite all that.
Frankly, I would have liked it a lot better if everyone was just eaten by bears.
March 29, 2013
I love native american myths and legends and i heard they will film this in my area. (Rumur anyway heard jonny depp might take the lead he liked this book) So this one started out really strong had me on the edge of my seat. It was unnerving but severly dissapointed with the ending! WHAT! where did the story go?! Just seemed like the author ran outta inspiration and just came up with a ending that didnt match the ceativity and suspence of the first 3/4ths of the book. It was a good read tho. hopefully the moview will fix the ending lol
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews