They make an odd pair: Verena Vitek, a youthful refugee from Serbia, and John Borrowman, a London, Ontario zoologist moonlighting as an animal-rights activist. He's haunted by a recent trip to China during which he witnessed the barbaric practice of milking moon bears for their bile, an ingredient in a growing variety of commercial products. To stop a Chinese company from harvesting bears for their bile in Algonquin Park, he finds himself having to rely on Verena - emotionally damaged, dysfunctional, but a crack shot with her AR-7 rifle. Others too, become involved; individuals with agendas of their own. The bears may be saved, but death and lives forever changed are part of the human price to be paid.

Ingrid Betz was born in Montreal, Canada, and grew up in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec. She was educated in Quebec and at an international boarding school in Germany. She has published five previous novels: The Mourning of the Dove; The Girl From Finer Trading; The ButterCup Dream; That Saturday Feeling; and Eve and Adam. Several of her short stories have won awards. Ingrid Betz has two grown children and lives just outside London, Ontario with a cat named Henry, in a house surrounded by fields, woods, and wildlife.

Ingrid Betz's profile page

"Verena, a refugee from Serbia, has tasted blood and wants to kill again. This fast-moving story about a group of animal-rights advocates has all the ingredients of a thriller--corruption, conspiracy, murder--but it also raises profound questions about human relations and, as Verena's mentor puts it, "the human dilemma. How to right a wrong without doing more harm."
--Erika Rummel, author of The Painting on Auerberg's Wall and The Road to Gesualdo