Hunter drew heavily from his dreams, his own life experience and a substantial amount of research as he crafted the superbly written In the Bear’s House, a story that follows the lives of a deaf boy nicknamed Trout and his mother Clare. He wove fact and fiction together, telling a story that speaks of despair, loss, loneliness, but more importantly, discovery and redemption.

It is a coming-of-age story that blends the real and the imagined to such a high degree that separating fact from fiction is a challenge, as what appears to be real is in fact imagined, and vice versa. This effective blurring of the lines is a testament to the level of honesty and research Hunter, who, like his protagonist Trout, is deaf, employed as he wrote this 455-page novel.

And it is a combination that obviously works as Hunter received the Canadian Rockies award – beating out 101 entries from 10 countries – during the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival, Thursday (Nov. 5).

Representing the award committee, Will Gadd wrote on the Banff Mountain Festivals website, In the Bear’s House “captures the transformative power of the Rocky Mountains… We initially had a hard time selecting this book for the Canadian Rockies Award as not all of it occurs in the Canadian Rockies. But the major transformations do, and the writing is as solid as the limestone in the Rockies isn’t.”