“The spirit in this book is as enormous as the great land and great bears to which Orsted was directed.

In converting pain—agony—into beauty, Orsted shares with us not just his great spirit, but that of the land that has taken him in and not so much re-made him as met him where he was, and where he is. A profound, troubling, soul-shattering book by a great artist, great spirit, great being. Through the Wilderness is an unshakably beautiful book.”

— Rick Bass, author, environmentalist

“Brad Orsted lives on the edge of Yellowstone’s wilderness and for most of a decade has walked the narrow ridge between beauty and madness.

Mortally wounded by the greatest of tragedies—the loss of a child—he is slowly pulled back into the human realm by wild beasts and the draw of the wild. It is a struggle. Wolves kill an elk in his backyard and feed on it for days; Brad watches. He stumbles into an isolated valley and meets a huge grizzly bear face to face. Suddenly he is jolted into the present with all his senses buzzing. He finds a pair of orphaned grizzly cubs who show him how to live again. Brad’s story is the classic American tale of redemption. He has written bravely, with an unguarded heart, of this dangerous journey.”

— Doug Peacock, author, Green Beret, grizzly bear activist