Crooked Tree by Robert C. Wilson

The Indian legends say that evil will return to the forest--and man will know the taste of fear again. That day is here,
   Deep in the Crooked Tree State Forest of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, man and nature have established a truce. No one thought nature would be the first to break it.
   Not James Davis, as he hears a stirring from the bushes while walking alone through the dense woods after his car stalls. Not a lone camper. Not two young women canoeing downstream through the forest. Who would expect the gentle black bear--one of nature's most powerful animals--to suddenly attack man with inexplicable ferocity? Why would his gruesome manglings be accomplished with unprecedented cunning? Why would his blood lust be insatiable? These people only come to understand unbearable agony, only pray for a quick death.
   Terrorised by the unaccountable bear rampage--and make uneasy by rumours of a ritualised mutilations of the victims--the locals mutter about an undersized bear-killing quota for hunters. The Ottawa Indians, sustained for generations in the Crooked Tree Forest by their tales and beliefs, speak of a distant legend that is come to pass: The bear walk. They believe that the spirit of an evil Indian has possessed a human body, and in this human form incites the bears to mayhem. But whose body does it possess?
Axel Michelson is a lawyer sympathetic to the Ottawas for legal reasons-as they fight to keep the white man from taking their share of  Crooked Tree Forest--and for emotional ones, for he is married to a full-blooded Ottawa, Janis. But he certainly does not subscribe to their superstitions. Not even Axel's young assistant Larry, himself an Ottawa Indian, believes in the bearwalk. Yet Larry, his loyalty divided between two worlds, finally comprehends the blood-truth of his people. Axel's bedrock of scientific logic crumbles more slowly: When he discovers human footprints walking beside the pawprints of the bears; when he sees Janis' eyes glow like an animal's; and, most shocking of all, when he looks with dread into a leather pouch Janis has hidden from him. The horror is close to Axel; it has already touched his wife.
   As the bears mass under the leadership of malevolent intelligence, hunters organise hungrily for a bear slaughter while the Ottawas attempt to exorcise the evil in secret ceremonies. But this evil is stronger than sacred spells or modern weapons. Only Axel holds the answer to preventing a rampage by the black bears, and he sets off in a feverish search for the forgotten rites that will save his wife's soul . . . and his own life.

Genres: Horror - Fiction
Condition: Good
Published: 1980 by G. P. Putnam's Sons New York
Pages: 350
ISBN: 0399124888 
Weight: 700g