In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for July 2019

This evocative work of nature writing traverses the world’s largest temperate rainforest to uncover the legend of the Sasquatch.

Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest is home to trees as tall as skyscrapers and moss as thick as carpet. According to the people who live there, another giant may dwell in these woods. For centuries, locals have reported encounters with the Sasquatch—a species of hairy man-ape that could inhabit this pristine wilderness.

Driven by his childhood obsession with the Sasquatch, yet trying to remain objective, journalist John Zada seeks out the people and stories surrounding this enigmatic creature. He speaks with local Indigenous peoples and a Sasquatch-studying scientist. He hikes with a former bear hunter.

Soon, he finds himself on quest for something infinitely more complex, cutting across questions of human perception, scientific inquiry, Indigenous traditions, the environment, and the power of the human imagination to believe in—or to outright dismiss—one of nature’s last great mysteries.

John Zada is a writer, photographer, and journalist drawn to stories about adventure and far-flung parts of the world. He has worked in over two dozen countries and spent years as a journalist in the Middle East. His work has appeared in the Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Explore, CBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond is his first book. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

"Zada’s fun, well-written travelogue will interest environmentalists and armchair adventurers alike.”
―Publishers Weekly

"An entertaining, provocative exercise in cryptozoology."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Strikes an engaging balance between curiosity and skepticism, letting the locals’ convincing stories speak for themselves while probing the science behind misperceptions and cultural beliefs.”
—Booklist

“Finally a truly talented writer approaches a subject matter that has been otherwise relegated to a cultural punchline...John Zada’s quest for this holy grail and his compulsion for emotional narrative is nothing less than a modern-day mythical journey, and he shares it with us in a perfect blend of poetic prose and creative story-telling.”
―Les Stroud, star of Survivorman

“A captivating tale of the search for a mythical creature, In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond is also a story about us—and our enduring desire to believe in something big, really big, that is out there lurking.”
—Harley Rustad, author of Big Lonely Doug