The Bear Hunter's Daughters
A Tale of Seven Sisters
Published on 7. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
400 pages
978-0-06-333884-5 (ISBN)
Description
In this modern day fairy tale, seven sisters raised in the woods fight to keep their freedom.
Deep in the woods of western Finland, a bear hunter has raised his seven daughters to live off the land and steer clear of the trappings of life in town, like cell phones and a social life outside their family. When on his youngest Elga's twelfth birthday the hunter is killed by his prey, and their mother dies soon thereafter, the sisters are left with unpaid bills and a leaky house.
The tension between sticking to the wild ways their father taught them and submitting to well-meaning townsfolk's efforts to "help" threatens to divide the seven sisters. Eldest Johanna tries to wield control, young Elga feels tempted by the pull to education, artist Laura spends all her time dreaming up sculptures and exploring nature - but their trips to the farmer's market to sell foraged mushrooms and their free time exploring their vast forest home bring them together in riotous fun. With evocative language and visceral scene-setting, readers get lost in world they've invented together and join the fight to protect it.
Inspired by Aleksis Kivi's classic Finnish novel Seven Brothers (1870), The Bear Hunter's Daughters is at once realistic and fantastical, an intensely sensory exploration of our essential bonds both with nature and with one another.
Deep in the woods of western Finland, a bear hunter has raised his seven daughters to live off the land and steer clear of the trappings of life in town, like cell phones and a social life outside their family. When on his youngest Elga's twelfth birthday the hunter is killed by his prey, and their mother dies soon thereafter, the sisters are left with unpaid bills and a leaky house.
The tension between sticking to the wild ways their father taught them and submitting to well-meaning townsfolk's efforts to "help" threatens to divide the seven sisters. Eldest Johanna tries to wield control, young Elga feels tempted by the pull to education, artist Laura spends all her time dreaming up sculptures and exploring nature - but their trips to the farmer's market to sell foraged mushrooms and their free time exploring their vast forest home bring them together in riotous fun. With evocative language and visceral scene-setting, readers get lost in world they've invented together and join the fight to protect it.
Inspired by Aleksis Kivi's classic Finnish novel Seven Brothers (1870), The Bear Hunter's Daughters is at once realistic and fantastical, an intensely sensory exploration of our essential bonds both with nature and with one another.
Reviews / Votes
"Go jump in a lake! Bawdy, fantastic, and surprisingly poignant, The Bear Hunter's Daughters is the perfect book for the wildest person in your life. Told with brio and humor, this fable of the seven redhaired sisters settles deep in your bones. I loved it from beginning to end." - Keith Donohue, author of The Girl in the Bog and The Stolen Child"Sensual and philosophical." - ELLE (France)
"Violence, hunger, cold ... a Homeric tale." - Public (France)
"An olfactory delight that calls to mind Patrick Sueskind's Perfume. ... A page-turner." - Liberation (France)
"Paradoxically violent and gentle, imbued with archaic traditions as well as an extravagant modernity and freedom." - Telerama (France)
"Exceptionally exciting." - Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany)
"A unique, rebellious novel about the untamed life in the vastness of the wilderness." - Buch Szene (Germany)
"A captivating masterpiece with profound characters and surprising twists." - Bibliomaniacs (Germany)
"The harsh existence in the forest is portrayed with immense ardor and wealth of detail. The wind howls and the rain pelts, the sisters watch their crop of potatoes freeze, while they keep themselves warm with booze and fall asleep with horny dreams of men. The days are filled with hard work and punch-ups, the bodies ache, the land is swampy and smells like sludge. ... It is bold, it is hilarious and like all inverted worlds, full of revolt!" - Aftonbladet (Sweden)
"Anneli Jordahl presents us with a heck of a tall tale. The Bear Hunter's Daughters is a scathing, expansive concoction about a family beyond societal control. Not in the 1800s but today. Other teenagers carry mobile phones. The severely unkempt Leskinen sisters carry knives and nooses. ... This novel should first and foremost be regarded as a hymn to storytelling itself. Stories that pull you in, that take your breath away, that provoke astonishment, sadness and horror." - Arbetarbladet (Sweden)
"Jordahl's prose has a stylish sparsity and luster which create an illusion of passed down oral storytelling with the austere Nordic poetry of a Norse saga, especially in the sisters' dialogues. The Bear Hunter's Daughters takes place on the verge between fairy-tale and myth, in a struggle that puts civilization and freedom at opposing ends. ... Are freedom and civilization truly mutually exclusive? Anneli Jordahl's tall tale of a novel feels more authentic than many contemporary realistic novels." - Goeteborgs-Posten (Sweden)
"With unbridled imagination, black humor and a keen eye, [Anneli Jordahl] gives life to a set of siblings I will find it hard to forget." - Tidningen Vi (Sweden)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Product notice
With flaps
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
398 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-333884-5 (9780063338845)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2026
HarperCollins
€12.25
Available for download
Persons
Anneli Jordahl is an author and literary critic. She has written several works of nonfiction, as well as critically acclaimed novels, including Like the Dogs in Lafayette Park and The Bear Hunter’s Daughters, which was shortlisted for the Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize, the August Prize and France’s Prix Fragonard.