Ernest Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica is legendary. The Endurance became stuck in the ice and the crew wasn't heard from for nearly two years; that everyone lived is one of the greatest survival stories of all time.
German poet Mirko Bonne's The Ice-Cold Heaven re-creates this incredible adventure from the inside. "Cowering down here for a night and half a day," says the novel's 17-year-old Welsh narrator, Merce Blackboro. Merce is a stowaway--the 28th man--on the British barque as it sets sail from Buenos Aires in October 1914. "You must be half starved," Shackleford says when they finally meet. "Fine. So now you're here."
It grows colder. Unrelenting rain turns to snow, painting the ship white: "Every day a slightly thicker coat sticks to the deck." Soon the ship is sheathed in ice. It grows colder. Blink too long, your eyelids freeze shut. Boiling water freezes before hitting the ground when poured. Eventually, the ice begins to crush the ship's hull. The crew tries to strengthen it from within, but to no avail. Then it's time to leave, with sleds, boats on top, dogs pulling, men pushing, taking with them just 150 of their precious photographs.
We know how the story will turn out, but Bonne invites us to join this close-knit group of comrades so we can experience the expedition's inhumane conditions first-hand. Thus we embark on a well-told, totally engrossing voyage. Bring warm gloves. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher