Welcome to My Monday Minis.
This is where I review short stories and flash fiction.
For today I’ll be telling you about Bear Dog
by Camden Ayan
My Review
Bear Dog is still a mystery to me.
I never got a true sense of where this takes place. The author is from Canada, so perhaps there. I’m also guessing as to when it took place. The way Jule expresses himself and the mention of a bailiff and constable have me thinking the 1800’s but I could be wrong.
Despite these unknowns, I still enjoyed this story. There’s what I think is native american lore dribbled throughout, especially pertaining to the bear dog.
I’m also not sure what the bear dog is. Is it living? A spirit? Is it a dog or a monster? You’re never told what it really looks like and left wondering whether it’s even real. This mystery has depth and more than one meaning.
Told from the perspective of the younger boy, Jule, you’re privy to his thoughts and experience the farm and its surroundings from his feelings, down to the chirping of a cricket.
I understand this to be the first in a trilogy. While I did get a bit of a conclusion at the end, I was still left with many questions.
I’ll be watching for more as much for those answers as for the authors prose.
3 Stars
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Now you’ve made me curious. lol
Me too and I’ve read it. Going to have to read the next story.
Thanks for reading my short story. I’ve written the second in this series and would be more than happy to send it your way. I’d love to answer your questions, and to start, the story takes place in Canada in the late 1800s, where bailiffs collected taxes from farmers (who fought back). It was also the era of residential schools. The father in the story is an Irish immigrant and the mother is Aboriginal. The bear dog existed once but is now but extinct, and is the focus of the native lore. In the story, Jules himself makes the dog a surreal creature in his own mind with the help of his mom’s stories, and is unwittingly feeding the dog through his secret animal graveyard in the back, hence gaining the wild dog’s loyalty and protection against the true predators – coyotes. I hope this provides a bit more info, and I’d love to hear from you and thanks again for reading my short story.
Camden
A book called Bear Dog has my attention right away!
That and the shed on the cover caught my attention. This story has a deeper meaning, kind of a moral to it. Much more than I thought going into it.
I am going to check into this further