By turns funny, savage, poetic and heartbreaking, Safety in Bear Country follows Serena, a recent graduate from art school who thought she’d have it all figured out and be making a comfortable living as an artist, but instead finds herself dumped by her boyfriend and back in her parents’ basement in the backwater town she couldn’t wait to leave. The year is 1994: miserable and lost in the dark forest of her early twenties, Serena takes a job with her small town’s main employer, an institution for people with developmental disabilities. When one of the residents dies in her care, Serena flees the trauma, ultimately embarking on a journey that pushes and pulls her between constraint and freedom, despair and hope. Set in small-town Ontario, Australia, northern British Columbia and Miami, Safety in Bear Country pulls the reader with gorgeous and inventive prose though a world of inequity, spirituality, activism and psychedelics as Serena labours to make sense of her place in the world.

Heather’s natural curiosity and passion for authenticity and adventure has led to diverse paths of travel, education, and employment. After many years toiling at university, she camped, hosteled and hoteled her way through North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. She has worked as a high school art teacher, a canoe and kayak trip leader, a yoga instructor, at a men's prison, at a women's shelter, and at an assortment of restaurants. She currently lives in Barrie, Ontario, and Safety In Bear Country is her debut novel.

Heather Paul's profile page