Bone detective gets scarey
April 25th, 2016
Susan J. Crockford is a rarity–someone who has mainly made her living off her ability and scientific technical skill for identifying animal bones for biologists and archaeologists. She has travelled extensively for her work and written numerous scientific papers. Having honed her honed science writing for a general audience on a blog called PolarBearScience since 2012, Crockford used her eclectic professional background, and her experiences as an avid fiction reader, to publish her first novel, Eaten (Createspace/Amazon 2015), described as “a polar bear attack thriller.
In the course of researching and writing about current events in polar bear ecology and conservation, Crockford saw that polar bear attacks drew massive international attention – a reflection of a primal fear that lingers everywhere despite the modern city landscapes in which most of us reside. Her goal was therefore to create a gripping story based on science for readers who would likely never buy a science book.
In Eaten, terror reigns across the unprepared populace of northern Newfoundland in the spring of 2025 as hundreds of hungry polar bears come looking for human prey. It’s a humanitarian crisis for the people as well as a wildlife crisis for the polar bears: stopping the carnage will be the biggest challenge local residents, Mounties, and biologists have ever faced. It’s a chilly, science-based alternative to Spielberg’s Jaws, an immersion into that primeval fear of being eaten by a bear. She hope to “generate nightmares for readers living in Ganges or Prince Rupert as in Tuktoyaktuk.”
Born in Toronto in 1954, Susan J. Crockford moved to Vancouver in 1968, and settled in Victoria in 1976. She attended UBC for her B.Sc. (Zoology) and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Victoria.
BOOKS:
Eaten (Createspace/Amazon, 2015)
Paperback, $21.95, ISBN: 9781519302557
Eaten (Spotted Cow Presentations, 2015)
Kindle: $3.99, ISBN: 9780991796625;
ePub: $3.79, ISBN: 9780991796618
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