In 1954．in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire，an anxious twelve—year-old boy fatallv mistakes the local constable’S girlfriend for a bear．Both the twelve-year．old and his father become fugitives—to Boston，to southern Vermont，to Toronto—pursued over the years by the implacable constable．Their lone protector IS a fiercely libertarian logge~once a river drive~who befriends them and distantly watches over them like a vast，idiosyncratic guardian…