The Last Great Wilderness . . . There is a place where bears can live in peace, where there is sea-ice all year, where the forests are full of prey, where flat-faces never go. Polar bears Kallik and Taqqiq, black bear Lusa, grizzly Toklo, and the shape-shifting Ujurak believe that this fabled bear paradise must be the destination of their quest. But the path they follow is dangerous. The burning Smoke Mountains are more treacherous than anything the bears have faced before, and tensions run high as they encounter obstacle after obstacle. A rushing river and hostile flat-faces separate them from their goal, and a bear is pushed to the brink of death. Signs and omens point in different directions, and the bears, though traveling together, must each follow his or her own star . . . causing one bear to leave the group forever. But as the others travel on, they soon learn that it will take all their strength and determination to reach their destination. And, if they reach it at last, they may learn that what they thought was their quest's end is in fact a new beginning. . . .

Here, set in the primeval beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains, is a memorable novel about a very old woman who could accept pain and hardship, but not defeat.  At ninety, Grandma Weller was still a midwife and herb healer to the mountain people.  Her words had been law until that year in the early thirties when the Government men came to buy all of the land for a new national park.  After that, no one would listen to her.  The lure of money, of an easy existance in the valley, outweighed the harsh freedom of the wilderness.  Only Grandma and young Homer Simmons tried to save their way of life.  When winter came, they were alone in a desperate struggle for survival.Woven into the novel are folk tales of the mountain people, some of them sad and cruel, some filled with gusty humor.  Then there is the realistic drama of childbirth and of death; the romance of Home and high spirited Jurie Biggers; the clash between the old and the new.  But it's Grandma, earth-worn and sky-weathered, with he guile and salty wit, her wisdom and compassion and love, who dominates the story.