Night of the Grizzlies — Jack Olsen

If you are an outdoor enthusiast, wait until after your next backcountry excursion to read Night of the Grizzlies, Jack Olsen's true account of two deadly grizzly encounters in Montana's Glacier National Park during the summer of 1968. I read it on my journey home after a week long camping trip with my girlfriend in Montana's Grizzly Country. Had I read it earlier in my trip, I surely would have spent the rest of my nights in sleepless fear and endured some terrifying backwoods hikes.
Olsen masterfully sets a scene in which Man and Grizzly continually come into close contact with disaster narrowly averted. Before the attacks in Glacier, Grizzlies were treated as a nuisance in the park by both park officials and visitors alike. Indeed the general feeling at the park was that since no man had ever been killed by a bear in Glacier National Park no man ever would. At Granite Park Chalet, a kind of backcountry "resort", the bears nightly visits to the garbage dump were anticipated and applauded much like an after dinner comic at a Poconos lodge. What makes Olsen's account so strong is that while we sense where this precarious relationship between Man and Bear is going, when it gets there it is more horrifying than we could ever imagine.
Outdoorsmen and urbanites alike will not be able to put this book down. The reader will be at once amazed by and terrified of the power and visciousness of the title beasts. Yet as the tale unfolds we see how Man has perhaps brought this tragedy upon himself. We weep for the two young girls who died such violent and gruesome deaths. But we also weep for the Grizzlies who merely wish to live as God intended, in the wilderness far from the smell of Man.