City Lights and Heyday Books celebrate the publication of
The Last Human Bear
By Greg Sarris
Published by Heyday Books
This event will take place in Kerouac Alley, located between City Lights and Vesuvio Cafe. It is free to the public. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Widely acclaimed storyteller Greg Sarris (author of Grand Avenue and Watermelon Nights) debuts his first novel in twenty-eight years with The Last Human Bear, marking the triumphant return of a writer hailed by Kirkus as “a singularly talented novelist.”
Set against the backdrop of 20th-century California Indian country, Sarris’ novel transports readers to migrant field worker camps, Depression-era rancherias, and cinematic Sonoma landscapes to follow the life journey of Mary Hatcher, a Native Pomo woman of unbow-able spirit. Forged in tragedy and endowed with peculiar secrets from her Coast Miwok stepmother, Mary comes of age an outcast among her own people, rumored to be a tolik—a poisoner, a shapeshifter, and the last of her kind.
A mystery even to herself, Mary passes between Native and white societies, carving a path against the twin headwinds of prejudice and poverty toward hard-fought independence. A life of defiant trysts and turns, two loves, and one curse culminate in a haunting final act for which Mary must unburden herself in order to die: “That’s why I’m talking. I can’t go on until I pass on this business.”
With The Last Human Bear Sarris delivers an unforgettable protagonist surrounded by a lucidly realized cast of characters. Offering an engrossing rejoinder to the paucity of fiction centering California’s first peoples, Mary’s story—textured with code-switching, old world lore, and a quiet enchantment with the more-than-human world—illuminates her times and introduces a voice to American fiction that has been conspicuously absent.
Rendered with a “touch that is both delicate and vivid,” says Copperfield’s book buyer Sheryl Cotleur, “this novel is so much more rich and complicated than a few words can express, and it is so very worth it to discover that in the reading.”
Greg Sarris is an accomplished author, university professor, and tribal leader currently serving his seventeenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive, Grand Avenue, Watermelon Nights, How a Mountain Was Made, Becoming Story, and The Forgetters. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sundance Institute, former board chair of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, and a member of the Board of Regents for the University of California. Greg Sarris lives and works in Sonoma County, California. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com.
Oscar Villalon is the editor of ZYZZYVA, winner of a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize in 2022. His writing has been published in Stranger’s Guide, Freeman’s, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He and his family live in San Francisco.
Praise for The Last Human Bear
“This powerful novel by Greg Sarris is about one character, one place, one time, one curse, but it’s also about all the stormy impulses in any human heart that undermine love, joy, connection, and all the ways that loss and privation lead to loss and privation. But it is itself lush and gripping as it follows one Native Californian from early girlhood to late old age, walking her own path through a changing world.” —REBECCA SOLNIT
“The Last Human Bear is a very complex, very moving meditation on personal origins and family lore, illuminating a part of California’s history that’s rarely seen in literature. It’s revelatory on every page.” —DAVE EGGERS, author of The Circle and The Eyes & the Impossible
“The Last Human Bear is a love story, a tale of place and of a bold-voiced woman whose life has been misunderstood, and a vaulting American yarn that carries you along like a leaf on the wind.” —JOHN FREEMAN, author of California Rewritten
“In The Last Human Bear, Greg Sarris has crafted a classic that addresses so much of what it is to be alive in the borderlands between cultures. Sarris excels at deftly skirting themes of deep trauma while celebrating the resiliency of the multifaceted self. This is a book imbued with a great transformative power.” —OBI KAUFMANN, author of The California Field Atlas
“A page into The Last Human Bear, Greg Sarris writes, ‘The heart has no limits.’ Thus begins an exploration of the heart—its longings, aches, grievances, regrets, hates, and loves. Sarris has given us a love letter to the western landscape and the people who call it home.” —LISA SEE, author of Daughters of the Sun and Moon and Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
“The grand return of a master storyteller, The Last Human Bear is a riveting journey into the intricacies of passion and how the legacies of the past can haunt us. Greg Sarris courageously explores the ethical struggles that emerge from genuine self exploration and offers a timely meditation on the possibilities for healing and reconciling with one’s nature.” —PETER MARAVELIS, CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
“Sarris has a master touch that is both delicate and vivid. The Last Human Bear is filled with this grace. This novel is so much more rich and complicated than a few words can express and it is so very worth it to discover that in the reading.” —SHERYL COTLEUR, COPPERFIELD’S BOOKS
This event made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation