Bearskin

James A. McLaughlin’s thriller, Bearskin (2018), transplants noir tropes into backwoods Appalachia, combining philosophical ruminations on the connection between man and nature and the proximity and simultaneous unknowability of the wild, with action-packed set pieces featuring gruesome hand to hand combat. The story revolves around the caretaker of a forest, caught between his attempts to stop bear poaching on the land and his need to get away from the dangerous past that is about to catch up with him. Critics praise the lyricism of McLaughlin’s language and the slow, deliberate pacing of the descriptions, but raise objections to the depictions of women, whose indiscriminate victimization mostly just serves to motivate the main character to act.

Because the main character is on the run from his former criminal associates and thus has taken on a false identity, his history is revealed through flashbacks. However, for the sake of clarity, this summary will instead proceed chronologically.

The protagonist’s real name is Rick Morton. In his twenties, Rick graduated from graduate school with a degree in biology and became an ecological researcher. Eventually, he became romantically involved with Apryl, a colleague who, it turned out, was using her research expeditions across the Mexican border as an excuse for her real work: working undercover as a DEA liaison to the Sinaloa drug cartel. Eventually, Rick joined Apryl in this risky, but financially rewarding work.



However, quickly, their real identities were discovered and the cartel took revenge: Rick was thrown into a Nogales prison while Apryl was tortured, raped, and murdered by a bloodthirsty assassin. Spurred on by her death, Rick spent his years in prison turning himself into a sicario, or a killer. When he was released, he hunted down the assassin and killed him in horrifically bloody fashion. Knowing that this would make him a wanted man, Rick headed as far away as he could.

Changing his name to Rice Moore, our now thirty-four-year-old protagonist finds work as a ranger of sorts on a privately owned black bear preserve on Turk Mountain in Virginian Appalachia. His job is tracking wildlife and fixing up the few cabins that are used by hikers and campers. It’s an ideal hideout: not only is he back to interacting with the forest, but because he can tap into his survivalist skills, he can remain almost completely solitary in a hidden cabin.

Rice spends his time in the wilderness communing with nature, but he also realizes that the cartel will do its utmost to track him down. He builds up his cabin’s defenses as best he can. He also makes himself a “ghillie suit” – a “camouflaging outfit woven from grass, branches and cotton” that will allow him to hide almost in plain sight in order to spy on illegal hunters and poachers, cartel killers, and of course, the bears that make up most of the forest’s denizens.



A few months into his tenure on Turk Mountain, Rice founds the carcass of a black bear that has been stripped of its paws and its gallbladder. Enraged, Rice realizes two things: he wants to protect the bears at all costs, and he has to do so quickly because once local law enforcement gets involved, his own background will most likely come to light.

Rice starts ingratiating himself with the colorful locals. From a neighbor, he learns that the poachers are working on behalf of “the mafia, who pay two thousand dollars for one gall, grind up the gall salt and sell it to the Chinese for medicine.” Most of the people who live near the forest seem to be hostile to its existence. The only outlier is Dempsey, a black man whose family has lived in the area for generations, but who is still treated like an outcast because of his race.

Rice also connects with the woman who held the caretaker position in the preserve before him. Sarah Birkeland, a biologist, wrote a series of articles in the local paper that enraged the locals with their environmentalist message. In response, they kidnapped her, beat her, and – you guessed it – raped her, leaving her for dead. She survived the assault and now tells Rice everything she knows about the illegal bear parts trade. She hopes that if Rice can put a stop to the poachers, she can once again take up her research in the forest.



Rice poses as a bear poacher to infiltrate the gall bladder black market. Eventually, he takes some hallucinogenic mushrooms in a misguided attempt to commune with the spirit of the forest to somehow anticipate the moves of the poachers. This opens the door for the novel’s extended drug trip passage, as Rice goes through his complex feelings about his dead girlfriend. Then, while high, he confronts and has a confusing fight with a hunter, complete with crossbows.

The county sheriff finally starts to investigate the bear killings and the violence on the mountain. On the minus side, as he digs into Rice and figures out his real identity, the DEA gets involved in the matter. Through their DEA informants, the cartel learns where Rice/Rick is hiding out, so they send a sicario – the brother of the man whom Rick killed in revenge in Arizona – to take him out. On the plus side, in the sheriff’s office works a large-breasted woman named Susan, who quickly becomes Rick’s romantic interest.

The novel ends happily, resolving all of its plotlines in a way that some readers find disappointingly neat: the sicario gets his comeuppance at the hand of the DEA, which now knows that it must find the mole in its midst; the poachers are identified and imprisoned by the police; Sarah is free to return to the mountain; Rick and Susan are set to live happily ever after.