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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #792477 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-16
• Released on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Amazon.com
There are writers who meticulously research their subject but reveal only the tip of the iceberg to their readers. Then there's Elizabeth McGregor. It's not that she skimps on research--on the contrary, she has a very large iceberg of information at her disposal. But she doesn't hide a bit of it below the surface, and the result is a truly epic novel that glories in the details of two worlds: Victorian Arctic exploration and modern medicine.

Jo Harper is a contemporary London journalist saddled by her editor with a story she doesn't want. Namely: Douglas Marshall, an eminent archaeologist, has set out on a trek to research the (real-life) Franklin expedition, which disappeared more than a century ago during a hopeless search for the Northwest Passage. Now Marshall has gone missing too. In the course of her preliminary spadework, Jo finds an archived BBC program wherein Marshall describes the folly of Franklin's endeavor:

Just a few short miles of ice. What was that to the greediest colonizing nation in the world? What were the months of darkness, and the strongest sea currents on the planet? The finest nautical minds of the age talked about it as if it were an afternoon jaunt, brushing aside a few natives, bears, and bits of tundra.

McGregor alternates Jo's story with a running account of the Franklin expedition, narrated by a 16-year-old sailor named Gus. Meanwhile, Marshall is found, and he and Jo pursue a clearly doomed romance. When their child is born with a rare blood disease, the distraught mother commissions a modern-day Arctic expedition to save the baby. Whether her characters are in the tundra or a hospital ward, McGregor's narrative has the momentum of a ship under full sail. Instead of bogging the book down, the carefully accumulated details propel it forward. Here is a large, complicated, lovingly made adventure that reads as easily, and as irresistibly, as a romance. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly
Making her U.S. debut with this dramatic, fast-paced tale of adventure, survival, romance and enduring parental love (human and ursine), British writer McGregor should reach a broad audience here. Acerbic young London journalist Jo Harper has an assignment to interview the wife of Doug Marshall, a British archeologist gone missing in the Arctic while pursuing the mystery of the Franklin Expedition, which vanished in 1845. While Jo has no interest in the story at first, it isn't long before she is fascinated by man and quest alike. When Marshall is rescued, she begins an affair with him and has a child, though her happiness is not fated to last. Three other narratives revolve around Jo's story: Doug's 19-year-old son John's painful attempts to capture "his father's true attention"; the deadly, icebound struggle of the Franklin Expedition, told from the point of view of a 12-year-old ship hand; and a polar bear's dedication to her cub. The protagonist of each segment fears being frozen out, both literally and emotionally, and struggles to survive very private trials. The book shifts its focus without losing steam when a tragic death and another disappearance occur, and a terrible discovery shifts the balance between the searchers and the sought-after. McGregor introduces perhaps one dramatic twist too many, but her novel otherwise artfully mixes historical background, up-to-date medical information about a rare disease, a bit of pop psychologizing and some upbeat lessons about the survival of the human spirit. Major ad/promo; rights sold in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. . (May 7)Forecast: Bearing the hallmarks of a great summer read, this novel hits all the bases. If McGregor comes here to do talk shows, she could attract Oprah's audience with her tale of selling the book just after her 20-year marriage ended.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The resonance of history is hardly an unusual theme, but in McGregor's adept hands it becomes the stuff of a riveting narrative certain to hold the attention of fiction readers across genres. English writer McGregor makes her American debut in this multileveled novel that rests in both the present day and the historical past. Contemporary British archaeologist Doug Marshall is obsessed with learning all he can about the John Franklin expedition. In 1847, Franklin, heading a group of men in two sailing ships, went to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The expedition disappeared. Marshall dreams of finding any remains of the expedition that might still exist, and his obsession comes to dominate his personal life, straining even his relationship with his son. When Marshall is killed in a freak accident, his son assumes the mantle of his late father's obsession and takes off to the north. Meanwhile, the baby Marshall left behind needs a medical contribution only his elder brother can provide. As McGregor shifts back and forth in time between this present-day situation and the nineteenth-century expedition itself, she tugs at the reader's heartstrings with a relevant story about a female polar bear's preoccupation with the health of her offspring. We can never escape the past, and readers will have no desire to escape this all-consuming novel until the last page is turned. Readers who respond to the high adventure of exploring the remote regions of the continent will want to connect McGregor's novel to the exciting nonfiction and fiction listed in the Read-alikes column, on the opposite page. Brad Hooper
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