Yellowknife author debuts memoir two decades in the making

It began with a bear.

Laurie Sarkadi watched through her living room window transfixed, as a mother bear with two cubs stood up on her hind legs, and stared right at her. The encounter sparked more than two decades of reflection and writing about the meaning of animals in Sarkadi's eventful life north of 60.

The result is the deeply personal memoir Voice in the Wild, launching this weekend in Yellowknife.

"That bear got me thinking about how important these animals are to me and what I can learn from them," the author said in an interview with CBC at her house off the grid outside of Yellowknife, where she wrote the book.

Sarkadi started writing about the bear encounter while she was at home with ababy, isolated in the bush after years working in journalism. Feeling cut off but in love with her wild surroundings, she started reading textbooks about bears.

"A few things popped out at me as being very similar to my life, my biology as a mother, in a way that really resonated," Sarkadi said. "The more I read, the more I realized my life and the bears' lives were quite synchronous."

Sarkadi started weaving facts about bear physiology and myth into her story and ended up writing the entire memoir that way, with each chapter centred around a personal encounter with a different animal.

The book is dedicated to Sarkadi's mother and grandmother, and to residential school survivors "and those who didn't survive."

"My hope is that people who've had childhood hurts in particular and there's a lot of that up here in the North will read this as a bit of a tribute to and acknowledgement of that pain and suffering, and that there is a way out of that."

Voice in the Wild launches this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, with readings and jazz Saturday night at The Fat Fox, in downtown Yellowknife.