A contemporary family story intertwined with a wintry woods fairy-tale from an un-named past offers a rich tapestry of words and themes to thoughtful readers. Gina lives in Ohio, where she, her father, and brother are struggling to redefine their family after her mother's departure. Jamie cares for his two sisters in an isolated stone cottage. Although separated by time and reality, both Gina and Jamie are wrestling with the same fear and uncertainty: their fathers disappear regularly, and they don't know where or why. Through alternating chapters, their parallel stories unfold, and the lines between real and magical begin to blur. Does Jamie's father actually become a bear at times, and then resume a human form? Is Gina's father in a relationship with an unknown woman? (The discovery that her pragmatic father is meeting with a psychic for consultation is more shocking to Gina than the thought of a romantic liaison.) Gina and Jamie's distinct voices and the author's poetic storytelling create a memorable short novel about the universality of family. (Age 12 and older)

Gina's mother has left the family. Jamie's too. And now their fathers are acting, well, weird.

In Cleveland, Gina's dad leaves home, each morning way too early for work. Deep in the woods -- is it near, is it far? -- Jamie's Da must hunt such a distance from their cottage that his children never see him in daylight.

Hurt by what they are losing and afraid of what they might find, Gina and Jamie set out to follow their fathers -- she down I-77, he down a path where Da's tracks soon give way to a bear's. They tell their stories by turns, unaware of each other till those stories turn them face-to-face.

What happens then is astonishing, beautiful -- out of this world.

Or is it?