Touching Spirit Bear Summary

Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen is a story written about a boy named Cole Matthews who is a nuisance to everyone around him. This delinquent has been in trouble with the law since he was a mere child. His latest crime? Almost beating a kid to death after a boy named Peter told on him for robbing a hardware store. Cole is sent to court where they will decide his future. Instead of going through the regular process of court, he is taken through a different court system called “Circle Justice.” The idea of Circle Justice (a court system designed by Indians) is to heal rather than punish. This distinctive court system decides to bring him to an isolated island off of the southeastern coast of Alaska where he will be forced to stay alone there for a year. On the island, Cole is angry and foolish until he learns to forgive, not only himself but the people he has hurt. Cole has what you call anger issues. Ever since the beginning of the book, the first thing you realize about Cole is his anger. In most things he does, it is all based on anger for everyone/everything around him

For example, Cole’s mother asks him to forgive her after all of the cruel things she has done to him. A mother is supposed to be protective of their children, and Cole’s mother was the complete opposite. It would’ve been hard for any person to forgive someone that did so many bad things to him, yet Cole did forgive her. In reality, the hardest person for Cole to forgive was himself. In order to forgive himself, he had to help the people he had hurt. When Cole is on the island he decides the only way to help Peter was to bring him to the island and help Peter heal there. Once he helped Peter heal, he was able to forgive himself for all he has done. When Cole is on the island with Peter, Peter starts to beat up Cole. Instead of getting angry and mad at Peter, he forgives him and makes Peter feel better about