Girl in Ice

Ferencik, Erica. Girl in Ice. New York: Scout Press 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

Seeing the name "Wyatt Speeks" in my inbox hit me like a physical blow. Everything rushed back: the devastating phone call, the disbelief, the image of my brother's frozen body in the Arctic wasteland.


Description:

I'm a big fan of intriguing storylines in novels and Erica Ferecik's Girl in Ice, comes through with just such a page-turning concept. 

Scientists in northern Greenland have discovered a young girl frozen in an icy crevasse, decide to cut her body out of the solid ice, and bring the ice block with her inside back to their outpost. They then slowly melt the ice cube surrounding her, shock her heart, and somehow miraculously revive her.

She is now somehow alive, living in the outpost, and actually speaking, although in an unknown language.

Enter the plea emailed to narrator/linguist Val Chesterfield to travel to the far north and attempt to communicate with the child. Val, while excited by such a unique challenge, is also hesitant. It is at this same Greenland outpost and under the same lead scientist that her twin brother worked until recently when he unexpectedly committed suicide.

Of course, Val takes on the challenge although she hates travel and is highly suspicious about the people and conditions to be found at the station. But attempting to communicate with this child is too much a temptation, so off she goes.

To find out what happens next, well, you'll just have to read for yourself. To say more on my part would ruin the anticipation, process, successes and failures Val finds in Greenland working with the child and the scientists. Suffice to say, if this brief plot outline, interests you, you won't be disappointed by the developments and the story unfolds to its unexpected, yet highly satisfactory conclusion.

  

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

More book recommendations

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo

At the turn of the century, arctic explorer Robert Peary brought back seven Eskimos (his words) to New York City. After a few weeks, only one survived, a young boy named Minik. His story of living the the New York City museum with his father's bones on display nearby, is fascinating, heartbreaking, and challenging on every page. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)

 

We Die Alone

 Howarth, David. We Die Alone. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press 1955. Print.

First Sentences:

Even at the end of March, on the Arctic coast of northern Norway, there is no sign of spring. 

 

By then, the polar winter night is over....There is nothing green at all: no flowers or grass, and no buds on the stunted trees.


Description:

As we drift into the fall months of cooler temperatures, of warmer jackets, and maybe a few snowflakes, it's a bit shocking to read a true story revolving around really, and I mean REALLY COLD weather. David Howarth's We Die Alone: A WW II Epic of Escape and Endurance

is exacly such a gripping, historical adventure set in the frigid temperatures of northern Norway. But be warned. When you read this book, it's best to have on warm clothes and a hot drink nearby, preferably sitting in front of a roaring fire with a cozy blanket wrapped around you.

During World War II in 1943, twelve Norwegian resistance fighters embarked on a mission of sabatoge in the northernmost part of Norway, an isolated outpost controlled by the Nazis and vital to their control of sea routes. The saboteurs' goal was to blow up key Nazi munitions depots and organize Norwegian resistance in that area. 

Unfortunately, the men were betrayed and eleven of the Norwegians were killed upon reaching their target.

But one man escaped, Jan Baalsrud, by running across frozen fields that night partially barefoot (he'd lost a shoe when jumping from their boat into the sub-freezing water). On top of that, he was hobbled by a bleeding foot where one of his toes had been shot off. 

To avoid capture, he had to swim (again in the sub-freezing water) from their target on an island to the mainland of Norway, then set out on foot (deep snow, no shoe, bleeding toe, remember?) for dry clothing, shelter, food, and help to reach safety in a bordering neutral country. 

And so begins his journey of months filled with isolated countryside, high mountains, deep snow, German patrols, an avalanche, and, of course, the unrelenting, freezing temperatures.

In the valley bottom were frozen lakes where the going was hard and smooth; but between them the snow lay very deep, and it covered a mass of boulders, and there he could not tell as he took each step whether his foot would fall upon rock or ice, or a snow crust which would support him, or whether it would plunge down hip deep into the crevices below.

For the escaping Baalsrudven, finding any form of help was difficult and dangerous for all involved. Anyone he contacted could be a Nazi supporter or at least an informer. The few local Norwegians in the area had to protect their families and lives, since assisting a Nazi fugitive was punishable by death to the entire family, slaughter of all livestock, and destruction of the farmland. 

 

Yet many gladly helped him. Word had slowly spread through the desolate countryside that one man had escaped the Nazi sabeteur killings. Through this grapevine, Baalsrud became a secret hero to the quiet Norwegian farmers, a symbol of their national pride, strength, and resistance to the occupying Nazis. And so they helped in small, but vitally important ways, especially when several times Baalsrud was on the verge of death.

As one Norwegian farmer reflected:

At last it was something which he and only he could possibly do. If he could never do anything else to help in the war, he would have this to look back on now; and he meant to look back on it with satisfaction, and not with shame. He thanked God for sending him this chance to prove his courage....[He told Baalsrud] "If I live, you will live, and if they kill you I will have died to protect you."

Challenge after challenge presented itself to Baalsrud. Wearing only grimy rags of frozen clothes, starving, and suffereing from painful injuries and frostbite, Baalsrud continually astonishes us readers with his perserverence. Example after example of his courage, will, and seemingly endless supply of optimism drives this adventure tale forward, forcing readers to bundle up and continue following Baalsrud to his ultimate journey's end. Absolutely highly recommended.

[P.S. There is also a film called, The Twelfth Man (available on DVD and Amazon Prime) that is a breathtaking representative of the book, especially in portraying myriad of challenges and undying perserverence of Baalsrud ... and the unbearable, unrelenting cold.]

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Rawicz, Slavomir. The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom.   

Incredible true story detailing the author's 1941 capture, prison life and eventual escape from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia. His route took him through China, Tibet, the Gobi Desert, and India, all while experiencing desperate cold, hunger, thirst, and fear of recapture. 

Give Me My Father's Body

Harper, Kenn. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. New York: Washington Square Press 1986. Print

First Sentences:
 

Qisuk and Nuktqo were at Cape York already when the vessel hove into view. They recognized her from a distance -- it was the Hope again, the same chartered Newfoundland sealer that had come the year before...It was August 1897. This was Robert Peary's fourth expedition to northwestern Greenland, the home of the Polar Eskimos.


Description:

This is the true history of Minik, a Polar Eskimo (this is the author's historic term) who as a child lived alone in New York City at the turn of the century. Brilliantly, heartbreakingly told by Kenn Harper in Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, this is a book that grabs you immediately for its uniqueness of story, characters, and setting. 

In 1897, Robert Peary, the polar explorer, returned to the United States from his most recent voyage to northwest Greenland. Among other treasures from this failed quest to reach the North Pole, Peary brought with him six Polar Eskimos. He felt these four unique adults and two children would be welcome gifts to be studied by anthropologists at the Museum of Natural History, (although the museum had not asked Peary to bring them any "live specimens"). 

All six Eskimos were scheduled to live in New York City for one season and then be returned to their home on Peary's next voyage. One of these Eskimos was Minik, a six-year-old child who had accompanied his father from Greenland.

Unfortunately, these newcomers almost immediately succumbed to pneumonia. Four died in the first months, including Minik's father. One Eskimo child was able to sail back home safely, but the now-orphaned Minik remained in the city where he spent months living in the museum basement, studied by scientists, and on display to the public. Eventually he was adopted by a wealthy family and began to live a new life of ease in America.

But that idyllic life was brief.

His adopted family became financially ruined. The museum, for their part, could not offer Minik housing or support. Peary did not want to any assume any responsibility for the boy and never communicated with child. Minik's life at a young age became that of an outsider, living on the streets in a foreign land, trying to learn a new language and the ways of Americans, without support from family, friends, or scientists.

Author Harper relates Minik's story in Greenland and New York, using his extensive research into diaries, newspaper articles, museum notes, interviews, and other documents of the day. Harper, who lived in the Arctic for over thirty years and is fluent in those native languages, also provides numerous photos of Minik, his family, museum scientists, and even Peary to better bring the book's narrative to life.

The book's title is taken from Minik's own words in trying to recover his father's skeleton from the museum. He had shockingly noticed that his father's bones were on public display in the museum along with his father's precious kayak, knife, and furs. Minik wanted to recover his father's bones and what were now his own rightful possessions, then return to his home in Greenland for a traditional Eskimo burial. With no cooperation from the museum and almost no ships equipped to sail that far north, Minik was forced to remain for years alone, without his father's remains, in the United States, apart from his true home.

I won't reveal whether Minik ever does return to Greenland. If he did return, one can just imagine what he might find there, what his reception would be, and whether he could even grow to stand the bitter cold of Northern Greenland. You'll just have to read the book to find out.

It's a gripping, fascinating, and deeply personal history of one person struggling to understand his old and new worlds. You won't regret picking it up and immersing yourself into the turn of the century world of exploration and science, and the life of one boy from a far-off land.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds.   

True account of Ishi, the last surviving Native American, a genuine Stone Age man, who was found in California in 1911. He had avoided all people outside his region for 40 years until his entire tribe including his family had died. The book chronicles his last years in the Museum of Anthropology in San Francisco where he was studied for his fascinating, unique skills, lifestyle, and history. A wonderful, tragic look into humankind's past and survival techniques. 

Arctic Solitaire

Souders, Paul. Arctic Solitaire: A Boat, A Bay, and the Quest for the Perfect Bear. Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books 2018. Print

First Sentences:

All the easy pictures have been taken.

But I'm here to tell you there are still some stupid and crazy ones left out there....I was heading north with at least one of them in mind; I was looking for the polar bear of my dreams...living unafraid and standing unchallenged at the very top of the food chain. 

Description:

I was freezing cold throughout this entire book. What did I expect?  Paul Souders book, Arctic Solitaire: A Boat, A Bay, and the Quest for the Perfect Bear is about sailing in a small open boat through heavy rain in the Arctic, sprinkled with climbing around on ice bergs and occasionally falling into the icy water.

In Arctic Solitairs, Souders, a seasoned wildlife photographer, details his real-life quest to capture one tryly unique picture of a polar bear. In his stunning, funny, and "chilling" account, Souders spends four summers motoring around the upper Hudson Bay seeking photogenic polar bears willing to do something interesting for a one-of-a-kind shot. And he doesn't want those starving, almost tame ones hanging around civilization scrounging for scraps like in touristy Churchill, but rather in the remote ice floes near native Inuit communities where bears roam as the largest predator on earth.

I have long dreamed of finding my own private Arctic bastion, unpeople but well-stocked with polar bears....Shouldn't it be possible to take a small boat and visit the bears during those [summer] months as the ice disappears and the bears head for short?

This means Souders must head north to the remotest parts of the vast Hudson Bay. The trip starts off as "a sort of lark" since he is not an expert in biology, animal behavior, or even boat travel. First he has to purchase transportation, settling on a 10' Zodiak ("my laughably puny boat with a too-small hand pump"), and, when that proves inadequate, acquires a 22' cabin cruiser, the "C-Sick." He then sets about to outfit it for a summer in the cold unknown, and haul it from Seattle hundreds of miles to the Hudson Bay. Of course, he takes too much stuff as well as not enough of more important items he finds out later, he tries to survive the cold, rain, waves, and drifting ice bergs daily using his wits and a load of good luck. 

I started planning with nothing more than my outdated Rand McNally road atlas. I've always found something seductive about maps. The offer all the promise of travel and adventure and discovery, yet foretell nothing of the discomfort, misery, and expense my travels always seem to entail.

Once he has motored away from civilization, he does find bears -- but they are all calmly dozing on rocks. Not much of a photo opportunity, especially when these bears catch his scent or see him approach in his tiny inflatable Zodiac. Usually they run off, but all too often they decide to explore this new, interesting smell of "sweat and dirty underwear." They are huge, especially when they charge, teeth bared, ready to jump into the water to pursue a possible meal. Several times their claws pierce his inflatable boat and Souders has to chug furiously back to his boat in a sinking Zodiac

Day after day Souders writes in his journal about his victories and defeats while searching for bears, trying to stay warm and dry, and taking photos from underwater, overhead with his drone, and with telephoto lenses from a hopefully safe distance. Of course, most of his equipment ends up dropped in the Bay, soaked, and ruined.

There is real humor throughout as Souders tries to find and photograph his giant subjects. Mostly, he is winging it to just survive the harsh weather, waves, and drifting ice. He recounts experiences with the local Inuit people living in isolated villages who suspect he works for Greenpeace and will try to stop them from their traditional lifestyle and diet of blubber that necessitates their hunting of whales. 

But he perseveres  and eventually turns this daily journal into Arctic Solitaire. His amateurish nautical (and survival) efforts written in a laughable stream-of-consciousness narration make for a pleasurable reading experience. Scattered throughout the book are his outstanding photos of the northern world of ice, water, and naturally enough, polar bears.

I'm still too cold to even think about following his path to the remote north, but Souders photos certainly opens a new world to me of beauty, animals, and life.

I had decided long ago that I could only spend the years I had with both eyes opened wide, hoping that life's majesty and drama might not pass me by. For these few fleeting moments, I had been given a chance to witness a scene of rare beauty.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Mowat, Farley. Never Cry Wolf: Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves.   

Mowat is dispatched to the Canadian North to document the lives of arctic wolves to prevent them from killing all the caribou as hunters claim. Unfortunately, Mowat is completely, humorously unprepared for everything he finds, from wolves who wander into his campground unafraid to their diet of field mice, and his own lack of wilderness skills. Highest recommendation (previously reviewed here)

Alone on the Ice

Roberts, David. Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration. New York: Norton. 2013. Print.

First Sentences:

It was a fitful start to the most ambitious venture ever launched in Antarctica. 

Description:

There's something about a survival story that always grabs me. A true story that pits people against impossible conditions is definitely my cup of tea. David Roberts' Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration is one of the best (and most aptly titled) in this genre.

The year 1912 took place during the last and greatest era of exploration. Expeditions were mounted to explore the Amazon as well as the North and South Poles. It seemed a last opportunity for personal and national glory for men like Scott, Admunsen, Perry, Shakelton, and Fawcett in the shrinking world of discovery and challenge.

Enter Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1912. His goal was not personal glory but to scientifically explore areas already discovered in the Antarctic but only briefly examined. To survey this wilderness properly, he divided his men into five teams with specific sections of the ice to map and gather information about the animals, temperature, and terrain of this mysterious continent. 

Once they left their base camp, unbelievable hardship follows each group, from 100-mph bitter winds, ice chasms that open unexpectedly to swallow men, starvation, illness, and hopelessness. After a time all teams were forced to turn back. Some staggered into the base camp almost unrecognizable with frostbite and haggard features. Others were not so lucky. Mawson's party was the last team remaining on the ice. His team knew if they did not return to base camp by the time the supply ship arrived to take them home, they would be abandoned.

It is Mawson's story, a man who shines as a leader, encouraging his party to keep on walking, keep on, keep on. Pulling sledges with equipment over jagged outcroppings of ice, Mawson and his men faced exhaustion, hunger, and frigid conditions each minute. Bottomless ice crevasses open up to threaten them with certain death. Mawson himself fell into one and was saved only by the help of a line of poetry.

If survival stories are your thing, this is probably the best ever. Bravery, danger, cold, and perseverance fill every page. Who will make it? Who will succumb to one of the hazards out there? Can the survivors reach base camp before the ship departs? 

Strongly narrated and illustrated with never-before-seen photos of the Antarctic and the expedition, Alone on the Ice is a top read. Highly recommended

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

The incredible true history of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated voyage to explore Antarctica in 1914 that ended with every disaster possible: shipwreck, starvation, open-water lifeboat voyage, desperate overland travel, and unbelievable hardships too numerous to mention. All was held together by the will and leadership of Shackleton, the commander. Absolutely the best survival history ever.

Special Post - Short Reviews #3

Here are a few short reviews of very interesting books that I enjoyed but just don't have the energy to compose a full review each. These books are all well-written, with great characters and interesting plots. It is only my lack of time (laziness?) that they don't get the full attention they deserve.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Born on Snowshoes - Evelyn Berglund Short

First Sentences 

I suppose that on the banks of American Creek in Alaska the hills were green with spruce and birch, and that wild flowers and berries spotted them and the valleys below. 

      

Description:

Author Evelyn Berglund Short recalls her extraordinary life in the wilds of Alaska during the 1920s and '30s with her two sisters, mother, and an old trapper who took them in when Evelyn was 12 and her father died. Her memories revolve around poling boats 280 miles away from civilization to their trapping cabin where they wintered, hunting, fishing, and trapping marmots, beaver and shooting caribou, bears, and moose. Despite only one year of schooling, Evelyn's stories are gripping, honest, and clearly narrated as she braves 70 below zero weather, freezing water, hungry wolves, sled dogs, and the threat of starvation. The four women and trapper lived for ten winters in that cabin, and her stories describe the beauty, humor, and harshness of that world wonderfully.

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Bruno, Chief of Police - Martin Walker

First Sentences  

On a bright May morning, so early that the last of the mist was still lingering low over a bend in the Vezere River, a white van drew to a halt on the ridge that overlooked the small French town. 

Description:

A small town in France is quietly supervised by a gentle police chief known to all as Bruno. A former soldier who never wears a gun, Bruno knows everyone, understands their lives, and enjoys the quiet life he has built for himself. But then there is a murder in his village, the killing of an old French war hero who had recently moved to St. Denis to live in seclusion near his son, grandson, and unborn great-grandson. The murder appears to be a hate crime, but Bruno cannot understand how this could happen in his peaceful community. Adding local police and state law officers complicates the investigation that Bruno feels may point to activities during the French Occupation during World War II and the Resistance Movement.

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Scouting for the Reaper - Jacob M. Appel

First Sentences  

Miss Stanley was new to the ninth grade that autumn, and we could all sense that she wasn't cut out for it.

        

Description:

Seven exquisitely constructed stories compose this book and each one is a gem. Full of characters with secrets and relationships that are grudgingly uncovered, Scouting for the Reaper engrosses readers in the common lives that turn unexpected. From the tombstone salesman who meets his former wife now as a customer, to a young girl who discovers via a simple schoolroom blood type experiment that her parents cannot genetically be her real parents, to a reclusive fairy tale researcher to a truck driver who crashes his load of penguins, each story is unexpectedly compelling and unpredictable. Strongly written and completely believable in its characterizations of ordinary people forced to reveal buried stories and make difficult decisions.

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My Life East and West - William S. Hart

First Sentences  

I was born at Newburgh, New York.

My first recollection is of Oswego, Illinois. My father was a miller, and we lived near the flour mill on the Fox River. There were only two houses. 

   

Description:

William S. Hart was not only one of the first Silent Screen movie stars as a gun-toting cowboy, he actually lived a fascinating live among the world of cattle drives, Sioux Indians, gunslingers, bronco busting, and prairie schooners in his unsupervised youth. His autobiography is cleverly told, full of anecdotes of both his upbringing and his film career and early departure into seclusion while he was still on top.

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I, Fatty - Jerry Stahl

First Sentences  

Daddy referred to my mother's reproductive organs as "her little flower."

In my earliest baby-boy memories, the man's either looming and glum -- not drunk enough -- or bug-eyed and stubbly after a three-day bender, so liquored up he tilts when he leans down to snatch me off the burlap rags my brothers and sisters piled on the floor of our Kansas shack and called our "sleep blankets." 

"You broke her little flower, pig boy!" 

--WHACK! -- 

Description:

Here is a fictionalized memoir of the silent film comedian, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Narrated by Arbuckle, the book reveals Arbuckle's rise from an abusive home of poverty to his early success on the stage as a 375-pound singer and comedian, from his rise to superstardom along with Chaplin and Keaton in the earliest silent films, to the horrific public trials and disgrace when he is accused to a rape/murder occurs. During that period, he is vilified by audiences to the extent that his films are removed from cinemas and he cannot work for years. A gritty, personal, and in-depth look at one man and his rollercoaster life of fame and shame on the stage and screen of that fascinating, greedy era.

What do you do when the world thinks you're a monster, and you know it's the world that's monstrous?

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The Collector of Lost Things

Page, Jeremy. The Collector of Lost Things. New York: Pegasus Books. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

Perhaps I would be too late to save them. 

The last dozen had been spotted on a remote island in the North Atlantic, on a bare ledge of rock, but it was already rumoured the final breeding pair had been killed -- their skins sold to private collectors -- and the single egg between them needlessly crushed.  

These were only rumours, I kept telling myself. But as I set out for the Liverpool docks, on that breezy April morning in 1845, I couldn't help hoping that I might be able to reach them in time, the last of the birds. 

Description:

It is the most delightful of reading experiences to have a book give you a completely unexpected shock -- some twist in the plot, some unforeseen action by a character. Something that throws out all your smug little preconceived notions about how the book will continue, who is the good guy and who is the bad, and the eventual conclusion. Something that makes you stop, re-read the last paragraph, and then take a deep breath before continuing. The book has now been born again with new vistas opened and a clean or at least revised slate on all characters and plot. 

Now the reading fun begins. It is suddenly all new. You can only settle in and wonder what will happen next.

Such a wonderful book is The Collector of Lost Things by Jeremy Page. I was so completely caught unaware three, yes three, different times in this book that I looked around the room to find someone, anyone, I could tell about this story and the unexpected turn of events that just had occurred. (Note: I'm working to keep my mouth shut until asked about books, but sometimes, like a great secret, the goods are just too juicy to keep to yourself.)

Set in 1845, the novel opens with Eliot Saxby embarking on a sailing ship bound for the Arctic. His mission is to discover whether any evidence of the Great Auks, an extinct flightless bird, might possibly exist. Hunted by collectors and museums for their skins and eggs, these birds only recently became extinct, with the last living bird discovered five years previously on a lonely island near the polar ice. That bird was strangled and its eggs crushed by fishermen who thought it was a sea-witch. 

Saxby, a trained naturalist, harbors a secret hope that he might actually discover a living specimen on some forgotten island. While excited about the possibilities, he knows it is highly unlikely he will find anything, even a feather, much less a living bird.

There are two other passengers on board: Bletchley who wants to hunt arctic wildlife to prove his manhood, accompanied by his cousin Clara, a very sickly young woman who is embarking on the journey for unknown reasons.

Saxby immediately recognizes Clara as a woman from his past, but when he approaches her, she claims not to be the woman he thinks she is and to have no previous knowledge of Saxby. However, her secretive actions, her avoidance of questions, and her peculiar relationship with Bletchley all puzzle Saxby. 

Each person has hidden motivations that make their words vague and even suspect for their truthfulness. Who can be relied on and who should be suspected of bad intentions and outright evil? Who can be loved and who should be carefully avoided? Aboard the small boat, all activities fall under constant scrutiny, changing these answers again and again. These twists of plot and individual behavior pull you onward.

At the ice fields, everything changes again. The desolation of the endless ice, the cold, and the isolation challenge each person, including the captain and his crew, in different ways. Events on the ice bring new revelations about each character, casting a new light on their actions and the events still to come.

And, boy, can Jeremy Page write! His words reflect a slight Victorian style of formality and attention to emotions and detail, but without overwhelming the plot. The descriptions of the ship and sailing are absolutely first rate. 

Narrator Saxby, as a newcomer to sailing, ably describes the smells of the tar on the deck, the sounds of the sails catching the wind, and the shouts of the deckhands. From climbing up to the crow's nest to gazing over the bow to crouching in the hold where slaves were once transported, Saxby's observations and feelings are expressed with such clarity and emotion that a reader is completely absorbed into the world and population of the ship.

• [from the crow's nest] I closed my eyes. Sounds I had heard on deck -- the eerie shrill wind or the low moaning I'd heard from my cabin at night, the soothing sighs of ropes and canvas, the release and hold of iron fixings, or the creak of the mast, stretching like the tree it once was -- these sounds surrounded me, explaining their origin.

• [Getting the Amethyst underway] The air collected across the sail's face, a hesitant caress, then gently eased forward. Suddenly it filled in one smooth intake of breath and snapped taut, as if punched by a giant fist. At the same moment I heard the ropes stretch, and along their lines I saw a mist of droplets being wrung from them.

The Collector of Lost Things is a story of survival. Saxby feels he a person with the ability to save things, not just observe and collect them, and he dreams of finding and saving not only an Auk but also Clara who seems so sad and dominated by Bletchley. For after all, Saxby knows "a happy woman is a righted world."

And it is a story of ice, of cold, and of life. As Saxby relates:

I felt the presence of ice itself. Frightening, moving unpredictably, spreading in brittle sheets across the ocean -- reaching out with living intent for the small pocket of warmth that is brought with each person who ventures to the Arctic. It is as though the ice searches for the glimmer of fire that burns in the hearths, and the pulse of warm blood that flows through our veins.

This is a great book, one of the most captivating, encompassing, adventurous, and thoughtful novels I have read in years. I does not disappoint on any level. And remember - there are unexpected surprises awaiting!


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Absolutely riveting account of Earnest Shackleton's ill-fated 1914 voyage to Antarctica and subsequent cross-country race for survival across the South Pole. His boat and crew are locked in by ice and only through incredibly heroic measures can Shackleton and his men hope to live. Riveting!

Mowat, Farley. Never Cry Wolf: Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

Scientific but highly humorous notes from a naturalist studying the life and activities of the arctic wolf in northern Canada. Mowat is a tremendous observer of wildlife, willing to challenge accepted notions about these wolves in light of his first-hand experiences with them. Great read for all ages looking for fun, science, and wildlife behavior.