Arctic Adventures

Recently, the library's monthly Historical Fiction NextReads e-newsletter (subscribe here) featured three Arctic adventure stories:

1. The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett - In the mid-19th century, explorers were obsessed with discovering a northwest passage through the Arctic Ocean. In The Voyage of the Narwhal, award-winning author Andrea Barrett depicts scholar and naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells as he and the crew of the Narwhal search for traces of Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition. During their voyage, they endure a brutal winter, encounter Eskimos, and make surprising discoveries about themselves and each other. The New York Times calls this "gripping adventure" a "marvelous achievement."  
2. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan - During WWII, Louis Belk, an 18-year-old American sergeant trained in bomb detection and disposal, is dispatched to Anchorage, Alaska. There, far from the fighting, he confronts an unusual weapon: hot air balloons launched by the Japanese, carrying both deadly germs and the explosives required to disperse them. As Belk carries out his top-secret mission, he falls under the spell of Lily, a beautiful half-Russian, half-Yup’ik Eskimo fortune teller, whose spyhunting lover, Captain Thomas Gurley, is Belk's superior officer. Not to be confused with David Mitchell's similarly titled Cloud Atlas, author Liam Callanan's debut illuminates a little-known event in American military history.  If this plot sounds familiar, it's probably because the book is currently being turned into a movie.
3. The Rope Eater by Ben Jones - To escape the bloody Civil War battlefields, 17-year-old Union Army deserter Brendan Kane joins the ragtag crew of the Narthex and prepares for a voyage of Arctic exploration. However, once the ship sets sail, Brendan and his fellow crew members learn that their captain's intended destination is actually a mythical Garden of Eden that he believes exists somewhere in the depths of the polar regions. As they venture through the frozen Arctic, their search for paradise turns into a horrific battle for survival. If you enjoy reading about extreme survival scenarios in frozen climes, you might also want to try Dan Simmons' The Terror, a fictionalized account of the 1840s Franklin expedition.

And if you don't mind mixing your Artic and your Antarctic fiction, another amazing read on this topic is Geraldine McCaughrean's White Darkness, in which fourteen-year-old Symone's vacation to Antarctica turns into a dangerous adventure when her uncle becomes obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, a mythical opening that may lead to the center of the earth.  Happy reading!