Quick Take
- Narration: Barry Abrams delivers a warm, measured performance that suits the unhurried pace of Mojave desert life and the tenderness at the heart of this memoir.
- Themes: Human-animal bonds, wild nature and domesticity, unexpected companionship
- Mood: Warm, gentle, and quietly moving
- Verdict: A genuinely affecting account of nineteen years shared with an injured bobcat, best suited to listeners who love nature writing with emotional depth.
I put this one on during a slow Sunday afternoon when I had no particular destination in mind, just the desire for something that felt unhurried and real. By the time Forrest Bryant Johnson described hearing a cry of distress cutting across the Mojave stillness and following it to a small, injured bobcat kitten, I had stopped whatever I was half-doing and given the audiobook my full attention. There is something about a story rooted in a specific landscape, in this case the sun-bleached quiet of the 1987 Mojave, that anchors even the most sentimental material in something solid and believable.
What Johnson does so well here is resist the temptation to make Trooper into a metaphor. The bobcat is not a symbol of freedom or wildness reclaimed. He is, very specifically, himself: a creature with habits and preferences and a personality that defied easy categorization. Johnson documents Trooper’s friendships with kit foxes and jackrabbits and desert tortoises with the same care and attention to detail he brings to describing Trooper’s relationship with Little Brother, the stray tabby who became a kind of adoptee and student. The emotional register never tips into sentimentality, partly because Johnson is honest about the strangeness of the arrangement and the genuine risks involved in sharing a home with a wild animal for nearly two decades.
Our Take on Trooper
This is memoir in the truest sense: personal, specific, and unafraid of the quieter emotions. Barry Abrams narrates with a kind of lived-in ease that suits Johnson’s voice well. There is no performative drama here. The pacing is deliberate, which will suit some listeners and frustrate others, but those who give it time will find a book that rewards patience. One reviewer described it as a story told from the unique perspective of a man who was genuinely adopted by a wild animal, and that framing feels accurate. This is not a man who domesticated a bobcat so much as a man who negotiated a coexistence with one, over nearly two decades of desert life.
Why Listen to Trooper
The Mojave setting lends the book a particular quality of light and silence that carries through even in audio form. Johnson’s descriptions of desert flora and fauna around his home give the narrative a documentary richness that lifts it beyond a simple pet memoir. His relationship with Trooper is clearly the spine of the book, but the supporting cast, Chi, his wife, the local vet who came to love Trooper as a patient, the tough neighbor whose reserve eventually thawed, gives the story a social texture that prevents it from feeling insular. The nineteen years at the heart of this memoir are not summarized but lived through, in seasons and incidents and gradual shifts of understanding between a man and a creature he never fully controlled.
What to Watch For in Trooper
Listeners drawn to dramatic pacing will find this a slow burn. Nothing here is structured like conventional narrative suspense. The anecdotes accumulate rather than escalate, and there is no particular climax in the traditional sense, only the long, full arc of a companionship that lasted until it could not anymore. Johnson’s writing is strongest when he sticks close to observed behavior and weaker in the few moments when he reaches for broader pronouncements about the natural world. Those moments are infrequent, but worth noting. Abrams handles both registers with equal steadiness.
Who Should Listen to Trooper
Ideal for readers who love James Herriot-style animal memoirs with a distinctly American desert landscape, or anyone who has experienced the particular attachment that forms between a person and a creature they rescued from certain death. Less suited to listeners who need plot-driven momentum or conventional story structure. Those who come in expecting a feel-good pet book will likely get that and something a little more textured alongside it, a book that treats the companionship of a wild animal with the seriousness it actually deserves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Trooper a true story or a fictionalized account?
It is a genuine memoir. Forrest Bryant Johnson actually took in a bobcat kitten he found injured in the Mojave in 1987, and Trooper lived with him and his wife Chi for nineteen years. The book draws on that lived experience directly.
Does the audiobook deal with Trooper’s death, and is it handled sensitively?
Without giving away specifics, the book does cover the full arc of Trooper’s nineteen years, including its end. Reviewers consistently describe the emotional handling as compassionate rather than melodramatic, which aligns with the tone Johnson maintains throughout.
How does Barry Abrams’s narration handle the quieter, more reflective passages?
Abrams uses a warm, unhurried delivery that fits the Mojave pacing of the memoir. He does not reach for dramatic emphasis where the material does not call for it, which is the right instinct for this kind of personal, observational writing.
Does the book go into detail about bobcat behavior and desert wildlife?
Yes, and this is one of its strengths. Johnson describes Trooper’s interactions with kit foxes, jackrabbits, and desert tortoises in observational detail that gives the book a natural history dimension alongside its personal memoir qualities.
