His first book, "The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship, Tragedy, and Survival", released in 2002 by The Ecco Press, is a memoir that tells the story of the author's friendship with the Japanese wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino, who is killed by a brown bear in the Kurilskoya brown-bear refuge on the Kamchatka Peninsula on August 8, 1996. In 2002, "The Telegraph" described "Walking Home" as "a hybrid: part memoir, part natural history and part anecdote." In a review, "The New York Times" wrote, "The quest to find a blue bear and photograph it emerges as the implicit bond between the author and Michio Hoshino. ... It leads Schooler sometimes through platitudinous country, where the sea-road is all too familiar. But it also takes him, and us, where we have never been before." In 2011, the book was adapted as a stage play by Perseverance Theater in Juneau, Alaska.