The Loneliest Polar Bear

Starred review from December 7, 2020
Journalist Williams debuts with an informative and heartfelt portrayal of the Arctic in distress. At the center of the story is a polar bear cub named Nora who was born at Ohio’s Columbus Zoo in 2015, abandoned by her mother, and subsequently raised by a devoted team that, among other things, donned wet suits to coax her to swim. “Every cub—wild or captive—shoulders a share of the burden of a species in peril,” Williams writes, and, indeed Nora became famous as “the sad-eyed face of climate change” and drew 250,000 visitors to the zoo in six months. She also serves here as a jumping off point for Williams’s exploration of climate change. He describes an Alaskan Inupiat village where rising temperatures have impacted hunters and surveys “all the ways humans and polar bears” are “inextricably tangled,” skillfully interweaving the dramatic survival struggle in the Arctic with the no-less-emotional work of conservationists who have used polar bears to bring “the far-flung realities of climate change” home to the U.S. This page-turner is sure to captivate animal lovers, nature enthusiasts, and anyone looking for a touching story. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Neon Literary.