Okotoks resident Dean Salter has released Don’t Blame the Bear,
a novel that follows a man’s journey to self-discovery.
photo by Lindsay Hanhart |
By Tamara Neely
Staff Reporter
Retiring these days seems to keep people just as their working careers. Take Okotoks newcomer Dean Salter, for example. After spending 27 years as a United Church minister in Ontario, he now writes books, acts as managing editor of the United Church of Canada’s Mandate magazine and picks up the odd editing contract. He’s also spending time promoting his most-recently published book.
Working in ministry, Salter spent a career considering direction in life, meaning and spirituality, so it is fitting his fourth book, Don’t Blame the Bear, considers factors that shape sense of self.
“I was interested in how people balance their lives and all the different influences,” said Salter.
Don’t Blame the Bear follows a man, Charlie Gibson, as he leaves his home in Ontario after the death of his father and heads west, destination unknown.
“It’s a story about a young man balancing the influence of his mother and father and how that creates conflict in terms of who he is, who he wants to be and who he doesn’t want to be,” Salter explained.
Driving the story are two journeys: the physical journey and the psychological journey.
“They are linked,” said Salter. “If he stayed where he was he couldn’t develop his own personality.”
Charlie Gibson ends up in Banff and lucks into a community of people who helps him sort himself out and solidify who he is.
Salter’s anthology includes a Christian devotional guide called Personal Journeys; a novel called Jason Seeley’s War about a Vietnam war resister in Canada; and a book of short stories about small town life, called Willow People. Now he’s working on his fifth novel.
Don’t Blame the Bear sells for $19.95 and is available at Back to Basics in Okotoks and online through www.bookstream.biz and www.amazon.com, or by ordering directly from the author at deansalter@shaw.ca
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