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See also www.claire-cameron.com
65,000 words
Manuscript now available
US: Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown
Canada: Doubleday
UK: Harvill Secker, Random House UK
(Photo: Nancy Friedland)
Born in 1973, Claire Cameron grew up in Toronto. She studied History and Culture at Queen's University. She then worked as an instructor for Outward Bound, teaching mountaineering, climbing, and white-water rafting in Oregon. Next she worked in San Francisco for Pearson Plc before moving to London in 1999. There she was until recently director of Shift Media, a consultancy whose clients included the BBC, McGraw-Hill, and Oxford University Press. Her first novel, the taut thriller The Line Painter, is followed by the challenging and suspenseful Algonquin. Claire lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.
a novel by Claire Cameron
IN A NAIL-BITER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE TOLD BY A SIX-YEAR-OLD IN A VOICE REMINISCENT OF ROOM, TWO SMALL CHILDREN ARE LEFT ALONE AT A REMOTE ISLAND CAMPGROUND WHEN THEIR PARENTS ARE ATTACKED BY A BEAR
Algonquin Park consists of nearly three thousand square miles of wilderness situated 250 miles northeast of Toronto. It is a popular destination for campers, hikers, and canoeists. When in 1991 a couple who went on a camping trip there failed to return, friends contacted the police. Their partially eaten remains were found, with a large male black bear standing guard over them. There is no clear reason for what happened. Attacks by healthy black bears are extremely rare.
Claire Cameron has imagined what might have transpired if the couple had brought small children with them. Algonquin grabs you by the throat and will not let you go. Written by an author who has much experience of both wilderness survival and motherhood, it is a brilliant examination of how children help each other and themselves in such circumstances – a sort of rebuttal to Lord of the Flies.
Praise for The Line Painter
“It takes a certain amount of courage to tread such well-covered ground; it takes significant talent to make such a familiar conceit feel fresh and original, to lift it beyond the constraints of the cliché. In her debut novel The Line Painter…Toronto writer Claire Cameron demonstrates that she has both, in abundance. … The opening pages of The Line Painter are a masterful balancing act of suspense and relief, a dance between 
expectation and surprise that steadily increases the tension to an almost unbearable point. Writing in a tight, parsed, minimalist tone, Cameron acutely conveys the tension inherent in the situation and, more significantly, builds on readerly expectations with this motif. It's a bravura performance. … Some of Carrie's actions are shocking, but nonetheless fully in character. That's a difficult trick for a writer to pull off but Cameron manages it with aplomb.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“An old B-movie premise-Car Breaks Down in the Middle of Nowhere-is given a fresh, distinctly Canadian twist in this wicked little first novel. The Line Painter fires along on its lean language and propulsive suspense, the kind of story you could swallow whole once you're past the first page. I certainly did.” — ANDREW PYPER, author of The Wildfire Season
“The Line Painter is a straightforward look at denial and the ways in which we seek forgiveness. Suspenseful, evocative, and well-paced, this road trip story of guilt and love offers glimpses into tragically human characters who inhabit the margins of redemption. There are no easy endings for Carrie or Frank as they discover, together, that some actions are unforgivable.” — IBI KASLIK, author of Skinny