In the Shadow of the Bear: A Michigan Memoir

by Jim McGavran

In the Shadow of the Bear chronicles the author's return, after a forty-year absence, to the site of his childhood summer vacations at Little Glen Lake in northwestern Lower Michigan's Leelanau  peninsula.
     The ancient Ojibwa legend that gave a name to the area's most striking geographical feature, the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, offers a way of understanding his mother's powerful but sometimes restless force of love and ambition in the family, as well as his father's quieter, often self-sacrificing love. Chapters devoted to the return to Leelanau, to each of his parents, and to his father's family culminate in the narrative of his daughter's 2005 Leelanau wedding.
     Jim McGavran tells his story of self-discovery in prose that is alternatively frank and lyrical as he recaptures his bewildered yet enchanted boyhood self, filtered through his consciousness of longing and loss, lending the writing a particular poignancy.

153 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2010

Reviews

[Beth Toner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bought this at Sleeping Bear Dunes. I expected a lot more than I got. Disjointed. It's the kind of memoir that doesn't have a point and only had meaning to the author and his family. I share his love of this region but this book didn't resonate. At all.

[Patti Groetsema · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have ever been to the Leelenau area in Michigan, you will easily visualize the shoreline & dunes as you read through Jim's book.
Childhood memories of my own were brought to the surface of my mind as I retraced the memories of Jim McGavran.