Touching Spirit Bear
- Cole Matthews sits on a boat with handcuffs on because he's agreed to spend a whole year in Southeast Alaska in order to avoid jail in his hometown of Minneapolis. Clearly this is a kid who has done some very bad things.
- Two men are with him for the journey—his parole officer, Garvey, and a Tlingit (Native American) elder named Edwin. He's the one who is steering the boat and knows where they're going.
- Edwin's the one who has gone ahead to the island to prepare the shelter and make sure everything is in order on the island where Cole is supposed to stay by himself.
- The old man is serious about this stuff—he even tells Cole that he has to wear his clothes inside out for the first two weeks of his banishment in order to show that he's ashamed of what he's done.
- Cole doesn't buy any of this stuff, but he goes along with it because he doesn't want to go to jail. He doesn't actually feel repentant at all, plus he believes he's too far gone to be reformed.
- He thinks of his parents, who have sent him to plenty of professionals over the year for drug counseling and anger therapy. None of it worked.
- Cole is here because of Circle Justice, a Native American form of justice that focuses on healing and bettering yourself instead of just punishment. He doesn't believe in any of it, but Garvey does, and he wants Cole to become a better person.
- The reason he's here is because he broke into a hardware store… and then beat up the kid who ratted on him, Peter Driscal. He beat Peter so badly that there was blood all over the sidewalk when he was done with him, and doctors say there might be permanent damage. Brutal.
- After that, Cole had to be kept in a detention center and his parents didn't take him home or pay bail. They're divorced, and though his father hired a lawyer, word on the street is Cole still might be tried as an adult.
- Cole holds a lot of contempt for his parents. His father's a drinker and an abuser, and his mother never seems to stand up for herself or for her son. After a while, they stopped visiting him in jail because he's so angry.
- Eventually, the only person who visited was Garvey, who is also the one who signed Cole up for Circle Justice. He told Cole that for this to work, he needs to start the process in his heart.
- Cole said that he will, but inside he's just trying to scam his way out of serving a serious prison sentence.