Saved by the Bear

By Holly Day

Would knowing how you die change the way you live?

Frode Hall inherits a book that promises to tell his story, and it does. It starts with a recap of his childhood, leads him through his teens and into adult life. Then it turns a page and shows how he dies in a car crash the following day. Frode panics, but can he trust the book? It's showing a huge Grizzly sneaking around the garden, and there are no bears in the garden, only Imre, his neighbor.

By not being in his car when the predicted car crash was to take place, he survives another day. But someone has learned he has the book, and it's showing ninjas breaking into his apartment to get it. Unsure of what to do, Frode turns to Imre. Frode doesn't know what to believe about his growling and talk of mates, but he trusts Imre to help him. They leave the city in a hurry, but will the book give them enough warning to keep them alive or will their journey end in a gruesome prophecy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685504397

Holly Day

Holly Day and Sherman Wick are the authors of several books about the Twin Cities. Sherman Wick received his BA in history from the University of Minnesota and has been a member of the Minnesota Historical Society for several decades. Holly Day has worked as a freelance writer for local and national publications for over twenty-five years and teaches writing classes at the Loft Literary Center.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Frode Hall double-checked the lock on the front door of his apartment. It wouldn’t keep Imre Warrick, his downstairs neighbor, out if he wanted in, but it made him feel better.

He didn’t believe Imre would break in. He growled and grunted every time Frode was nearby, which was way more often than it should have been, but he hadn’t shown any tendencies of wanting to hurt him.

Imre had a sixth sense for when Frode would enter the building. He was the biggest man Frode had ever had the pleasure of being wary of, but he was convinced it was his imagination that painted Imre in a bad light.

And things could’ve gone spectacularly bad a couple of weeks ago when Dario had found his apartment. He wasn’t hiding from Dario, but he hadn’t let him know where he’d gone either.

When Dario had banged on his door and shouted at Frode to let him in, Frode had opened but not moved out of the way. He didn’t want to be alone with Dario behind closed doors ever again. Then Imre had come up the stairs. He hadn’t spoken, but by a miracle, Dario had left.

If Imre was the biggest man Frode had the pleasure of being wary of, Dario was the first man he’d been afraid of, at least in his adult life. He had no idea how things could’ve gone as badly as they had.

Dario had swept him off his feet. He’d been kind and charming and made Frode want to do everything he asked for. It was fine in the beginning, but then Dario had wanted him to do things he wasn’t comfortable with, had wanted him to stop seeing his friends and family, had wanted him to dress a certain way, to eat and drink what Dario wanted him to eat and drink, and so on.

Like one of those horror stories you read about in the paper, and Frode was too ashamed of having bought Dario’s lies to talk to anyone about it.

The final straw had been when he’d lied about having had coffee—Frode loved coffee—and Dario had slapped him hard enough to split his lip and then smashed all their cups on the kitchen floor. He’d told Frode to clean it up since it was his fault Dario had been forced to destroy the cups.

With a stinging cheek, a pulsing lip, the taste of blood on his tongue, and tears running down his cheeks, Frode had cleaned up the mess. The next day, he’d called every number of every landlord he could find. It didn’t matter where he moved, but he had to get out.

He’d finally gotten hold of Julieta Bedolla, a rapid-talking woman who had a small flat that had been vacated the day before despite there being two months left on the tenant’s contract. It wasn’t until Frode had signed the lease for six months, she told him the reason the previous renter had moved was because the downstairs neighbor scared away all their friends when they came to visit.

Luckily—perhaps not the word he’d used a few weeks ago—he didn’t have any friends left for Imre to scare.

Heaving a sigh, he slumped on the ratty couch he’d picked up at the thrift store. It had been a weird day. He’d been halfway through his first cup of coffee and had been staring at the toast he was working up to take a bite of when his phone rang.

The woman calling claimed to be Norman Hall’s lawyer. Norman was Frode’s dad’s uncle, and he hadn’t had any contact with his dad’s side of the family, his dad included, since he was a teen.

The attorney had told Frode to come to her office, and since it was his day off work, he had. Norman had died peacefully in his bed two months prior, and Frode was one of the heirs named in his will. Frode hadn’t believed her. He hadn’t spoken to Norman since his parents’ divorce, and he’d believed him long gone already.

The lawyer handed him a flat paper box. Inside was a set of keys, some papers about an old cabin in Draymoor, which was about ninety miles outside of Pinedale, and an old leather-bound book with brass-colored letters forming the phrase Will Tell Your Story. Frode stared at the book, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, while the lawyer kept talking as if nothing had happened. He shut the box and shuddered before forcing himself to listen to what she was