The Bear, William Faulkner, 1940

A short novel that combines a terrific adventure story about hunting a giant bear that has terrorized a rural community and a family genealogy of slavery, miscegenation, scattering, cruelty and caring.  Faulkner’s dialogue that is nearly indecipherable at times is carried by some extraordinarily vivid characters—some human, like the coming of age Isaac McCaslin, and some animal like Old Ben, the bear, and Lion, the mongrel dog who brings the bear down.  Nobel Prize winning material