Six days after she was born in 2015 at the Columbus Zoo, Nora the polar bear was abandoned by her mother.
A team of zookeepers and veterinarians sprang into action, feeding the tiny cub and keeping her warm. Although there were frightening moments and setbacks, Nora survived. When she was not quite a year old, she was sent to a new home, the Oregon Zoo in Portland. There she caught the attention of Kale Williams, a reporter at The Oregonian who covers science and the environment.
Williams produced what became a popular and award-winning series of stories about Nora for his newspaper, then expanded the project for a book. He traveled three times to Alaska, where, in the tiny Inupiat village of Wales, he met Gene Agnaboogok. Agnaboogok was a hunter who, in 1988, had inadvertently killed the mother of two polar bear cubs. He rescued the cubs, they were sent to zoos and one of them, Nanuq, became Nora’s father.