Ben Mikaelsen

Ben Mikaelsen was born in La Paz, Bolivia in 1952, to missionary parents of Danish descent, and grew up there. He was kept out of school until fourth grade and bullied once he got there; the family moved to the United States shortly before he started seventh grade, and thin English made him a target again in Minnesota. He taught himself to swim and dive, took flying and parachuting lessons, and left high school for a year to jump with a competition team. While building a house in Montana he took in an American black bear cub called Buffy, who stayed nearly twenty-seven years until his death in September 2010 and whom he described as a 750-pound member of the family. Touching Spirit Bear (HarperCollins, 2001) draws on that life. Fifteen-year-old Cole Matthews, facing prison for badly injuring a classmate, agrees instead to Circle Justice, a sentencing alternative the novel bases on Tlingit practice, and is banished for a year to a remote Alaskan island, where a white bear leaves him for dead. Two earlier novels, Rescue Josh McGuire and Petey, each took a Western Writers of America Spur Award for juvenile fiction.