Wow, this is a beautifully crafted book filled with characters who leap off the pages and into your heart. These aren't perfect people, they've made mistakes and make a few during the course of the book which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. I have a short attention span these days and most books simply bore me or just plain annoy me. Despite a few obvious tear-jerking plot contrivances this is one that'll stick with me for a bit and one of the better books I've read this year.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was not a story to hurridly skim through. It took some deep thought and visualization, especially to picture the bear. ...[And]the gun firing accidently ...I belive it can and does happen more than we know. For instance kids that play with guns and they go off...I was amazed to see people criticize this story and not even get the names right. The hero was Quentin, not Richard, that was his dad the original sculpter.

My grandmother recommended this book to me and when I finally picked it up, I couldn't put it down. The novel has two stories. In one, a scupltor struggles with his career and family and is comissioned to build a bear out of scrap metal for a small southern town. The second story details how the bear scuplture divides the town into those who love it and those who hate it. One man in particular is moved by the sculpture and it becomes a symbol of his family. Years later, the scupltor's son comes to claim the bear from the man's daughter meet. The result is tension, small-town gossip, and eventually some romance. This story is very unique, full of interesting characters. It is a nice, deep story in contrast to the many light-hearted Bridget Jones novels that are so popular today.

This book is great, it's a wonderful story! I recommend this story to anyone. It's a story about two people destined to meet and about the power of fate to change peoples lives forever.

I really wanted to like this book. I've read other books by this author and I was truely looking forward to seeing what all the hype was about. However, I was greatly disappointed. The book was good until the leading characters actually met. The meeting counldn't have been more contrived-a tornado that just destroyed her barn and nothing else-no one ever mentioning it afterward. I was even disturbed by the hero's handling of a autistic man. Just 'act like a man'. Why didn't we think of this before? Autistic, kissing cousins who are made for each other because of Mickey and Minnie Mouse shirts-who can gather black bears and drive them around town. And let's not talk about how the hero is shot, at which point I literally dropped the book and groaned.
Again, the book started off good when the characters were in their own element, but when the two met, I was left scratching my head and wondering what the heck happened.