When Colleen O’Brien sat down to write her first novel, the setting of the book had to be Glacier National Park.  

“It is such an intense place,” said O’Brien. “It’s this place of extremes, and when you’ve gotten worn down from hiking and climbing, there’s no pretense ... you are just able to be yourself.” 

O’Brien’s deep veneration for the landscape of Glacier comes to bear in her book, “Baited,” released earlier this month. The novel follows park rangers Mack Savage and Clancy Dyer as they work to unravel the mystery surrounding their missing coworker, his shredded tent and a grizzly bear study gone horribly wrong.  

While the story is a work of fiction, O’Brien said she was heavily inspired by her own experiences living and working in East Glacier.  

O'Brien first experienced the Crown of the Continent in 1989 while on vacation and was instantly awed by the magnitude of the mountain landscape.  

“I was struck by the idea that some people get to live here,” she recalled. 

O’Brien made it her goal to become one of those people. After graduating college, she moved in with an aunt in Missoula. In 1994, she got her first summer job at the park, working in a small cafe in St. Mary.  

Over the course of the next decade, O’Brien traveled between Missoula and East Glacier. During the school year, she worked at the Mansfield Library and pursued a graduate degree in creative writing. Come summertime, she applied for as many backcountry permits as she could. 

In 2003, O’Brien accepted a job teaching English at Blackfeet Community College. The job not only brought her to the eastern perimeter of Glacier but also allowed her to take on work as a summer park ranger. Her first summer working in the park happened to coincide with the beginning of a long-term research project studying grizzly bears.  

At the time, scientists had only a vague idea of how many bears frequented the area in and around Glacier because the dense tree cover made such aerial surveys difficult. Instead, researchers planned to estimate the grizzly population by using a revolutionary form of DNA analysis to identify individual grizzlies based only on hair follicles.  

In the summer of 2004, biologists constructed more than 2,000 traps in Glacier Park. Each one included a wood pile slathered with fermented cow’s blood and fish guts encircled by a strand of barbed wire. When a curious bear poked its head into the fragrant wood pile, the barbs snagged a few strands of hair for scientists to study. 

While she never worked directly with the grizzly bear researchers, O’Brien said the study saturated her four-year career as a summer park ranger. She sometimes encountered the traps while hiking in the park and spent hours discussing the project with friends and coworkers.  

Ultimately, researchers collected and analyzed 34,000 hair samples. The results suggested that about 765 different grizzlies roamed the area in and around Glacier, more than twice as many as previous estimates. 

By the time the final population estimate was announced, O’Brien had left her summer job to help her husband, Mark Howser, run a growing portfolio of East Glacier businesses and raise the couple’s three children. 

When the two met at a local fundraising event, O’Brien said Howser kept all his business documents in a laundry basket. Once they got married, she rearranged everything into files and took over the behind-the-counter operations, which now include the Whistling Swan Motel, Glacier Park Trading Company and Rock and Roll Bakery. Howser and O’Brien also operated Two Medicine Grill for nearly 30 years before selling it to an employee in 2024. 

“A lot of my dreams had come true,” O’Brien said, counting each one on her fingers. She had moved to East Glacier, gotten married, had children. 

But O’Brien missed spending time in Glacier National Park, and still harbored a desire to write stories. “Baited” was the natural result. 

Even though the events and characters are fictionalized, O’Brien initially had some reservations writing about a controversial topic like grizzly bear management. Unlike a traditional murder mystery, "Baited” doesn’t end with a singular villain. Instead, O’Brien focused on creating realistic characters that sometimes make regrettable choices as they grapple with the complexities of living in bear country. 

Ultimately, she hopes to “give the reader a satisfying experience,” regardless of their perspectives on grizzly bear management. 

O’Brien will be signing copies of her book at the Kalispell Barnes & Noble on June 28 from 1 to 4 pm. 

Reporter Hailey Smalley may be reached at 758-4433 or [email protected].