Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Overview

E. K. Johnston's Exit, Pursued by a Bear centers on Hermione Winters, the captain of an elite competitive cheerleading squad in the small town of Palermo Heights, where cheer isn't a sideline activity but the town's marquee sport. Hermione arrives at her final summer training camp expecting it to cement her legacy as a leader, only for a stranger to drug her drink at a camp party. She wakes with no memory of the assault that followed.

The novel picks up in the aftermath, following Hermione as she returns to her ordinary life — school, teammates, friendships, a looming pregnancy — while trying to hold onto the identity she built before the attack. Johnston is less interested in the crime itself than in what comes after: the slow, deliberate work of a survivor reconstructing her sense of self under public scrutiny.

Rather than framing Hermione as a victim defined by what happened to her, the book insists on her agency at every turn, from the medical and legal choices she faces to how she chooses to be seen by her community.

A Story About Recovery, Not Victimhood

Johnston has spoken about wanting to write a rape narrative that centers support rather than trauma for its own sake, and that intention shapes the book's structure: Hermione is surrounded by a coach, best friend, and teammates who believe her immediately and rally around her recovery. This choice sets the novel apart from many stories about sexual assault, which often dwell on isolation or disbelief. Here, the tension comes instead from Hermione's internal struggle to reconcile the girl she was with the one she's becoming, and from the practical, unglamorous realities of pursuing an investigation and considering her options around the resulting pregnancy.

The cheerleading setting is deliberate rather than decorative. By making Hermione a captain and a small-town celebrity, Johnston sets up a pointed contrast between the archetypes of "star athlete" and "cautionary tale," and spends the novel refusing to let Hermione be reduced to either.

Why Exit, Pursued by a Bear Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel center overwhelmingly on its direct treatment of rape and sexual assault, which some challengers have deemed too explicit or too mature for teen readers regardless of its intent. Related complaints have targeted the book's frank handling of the aftermath of assault, including references to pregnancy, medical care, and reproductive decision-making, which some parents and community members have viewed as inappropriate subject matter for a school library or classroom. A smaller number of challenges have cited general concerns about sexual content in young adult fiction. Within this catalog, the novel has been the subject of 3 statewide and 4 district-level challenge records, reflecting the broader wave of scrutiny young adult books addressing sexual violence have faced in recent years.