A Constellation of Minor Bears

• Author: Jen Ferguson
• Genre: YA Contemporary
• Publication Date: September 24, 2024
• Publisher: Heartdrum

Thank you to HarperCollins, Heartdrum, and Jenny Lu for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger.

While she knows the accident wasn’t Tray’s fault, she will never forgive him for being there and failing to stop the damage. But she can’t forgive herself for not being there either.

Determined to go on the trio’s postgraduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger. And despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists in store.

In this stunning journey about walking down an unexpected path without losing the people the you love. Ferguson weaves a tale that gracefully explores questions about racism, fatphobia, disability, sexuality, grief, found family, and love of all kinds.

I received a gorgeous hard copy of this book from the publisher, and let me tell you, this book will be gracing my shelves. You know how you just hear about or see a book and can’t wait to read it and love it? That’s exactly what happened to me with this one. Let me list all the reasons I loved this book and everything about it.

For starters, the cover is what caught my attention. It features visibly indigenous characters, and two fat female characters, all sitting around a tent. I’m always especially intrigued by books that don’t have the typical covers, even though I do love my cartoon-style romance covers, intricate designs for fantasy, and other pretty covers. This cover spoke to me, as a fat, bisexual, disabled woman, the same way that the cover for The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen spoke to my experience of being associated with an Orthodox Jewish temple, featuring a visibly Orthodox Jewish character with a kosher supermarket in the background, right on the cover.

Once I got started reading, it became clear that this would be a book that featured diverse representation. The story is told through the perspective of the three main characters in the story, Molly, Traylor, and Hank. Personally, I thought that this was the best possible way to tell this story, since it allows readers to see inside the heads of each of the characters during their first-person chapters, and they all sounded very different. 

The story delves into some heavy topics, and it speaks to Ferguson’s talent at addressing themes like ableism, guilt, fatphobia, sexuality, grief, and learning to find acceptance of ourselves no matter what others think or say. The dramatic and difficult hike of the Pacific Coast Trail sets the background for this story. It adds a level of unpredictability, since the hike involves traveling through wilderness where they can encounter bears, characters that gave me the creeps, and some surprisingly new friends. In addition, these hikes force people together in physically and mentally challenging terrain, often leading to an opening to discuss deeper topics. 

Molly is filled with anger—she’s angry at the accident that left her brother with a traumatic brain injury, she’s angry at Tray because he was with Hank at the time, and she’s angry with herself for not being there on that one day that changed everything for the three of them. It was hard to like her at times because she was such an angry character for a good portion of the story, and while I could understand why she feels the way she does. However, she grew a lot over the course of the journey, both as an individual and as part of what becomes a found family. 

In addition to all of this, the experience of racism and other prejudices that each main character perceives is different. Tray’s experience as a visibly indigenous teenager (Métis) is different from Molly’s as bisexual, biracial (Métis/Caucasian) teenager, which is different from Hank’s experience as a gay, Caucasian man with a disability. I could easily picture the three of them before Hank’s accident as the Three Musketeers: all for one and one for all. But Hank’s accident put a fracture in their relationship than none of them seem to know how to mend, even though none of them has given up on any others. 

Overall, I was incredibly impressed with this book, and have already recommended it to at least one friend. The incorporation of Métis culture and heritage into the story, the difficult relationships and emotions that gradually build, explode, and reform into something new over the course of the story. I found the juxtaposition of the changing points in their lives (this was their postgraduation plan) with the changing bonds between them all, and their individual discovery of who they are not that everything has changed. I can’t say enough good things about this book, but I have the feeling that if I rave any more, I’ll just be repeating myself. I’d recommend this to readers who like diverse books, busy plots set against a dramatic natural setting, learning about the experiences of people who might look, think, or believe differently than them, and reading YA contemporary books featuring diverse characters. 

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