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Synopsis
When Jo Harper falls in love with a maverick archaeologist, Doug Marshall, she also falls into Doug's obsession with one of history's greatest mysteries of exploration: one hundred fifty years ago, Sir John Franklin and his crew of one hundred twenty men sailed two ships to the Arctic on a surveying trip and were never seen again. Doug has spent his entire life in search of an answer to what happened to them, sacrificing his first marriage and his relationship with his son, John, along the way. But as he and Jo plan their future together, a shocking accident forever changes their lives, leaving them shattered and unable to pick up the pieces.
Devastated by the accident, John goes into self-imposed hiding. Jo, feeling abandoned, is confronted by the unthinkable-her young son, Sam, has a life-threatening disease and his only hope of survival lies with John, as he is a match for a bone marrow transplant. Desperate to find John in order to save her son, Jo cannot find anyone who can reach him. But soon she learns that John's fate is curiously tied to the Franklin Expedition. Haunted by the despair of those men lost in the Expedition and his own past, John has ventured into the ice floes of the Arctic in search of answers to what happened to Franklin's crew and to his own life. Unbeknownst to him, a frantic search is on, not only to save his life, but the life of a brother he doesn't know is in jeopardy.
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Review
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
About the Author
Elizabeth McGregor is an award-winning short-story writer, the author of six acclaimed psychological thrillers and a forthcoming comic novel under the pseudonym Holly Fox. THE ICE CHILD is her most accomplished and ambitious work to date. She lives in Dorchester with her daughter, Kate.
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- PublisherBantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group)
- ISBN 10 0553815040
- ISBN 13 9780553815047
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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Ice Child, the
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Transworld Publishers Ltd, United Kingdom, London
ISBN 10: 0553815040
ISBN 13: 9780553815047
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Paperback
Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration. Seller Inventory # GOR003611753
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The Ice Child
Seller: Book Express (NZ), Wellington, New Zealand
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Good. 528 pages. Cover worn. Jo Harper, a successful young journalist, has only her adored two-year-old son, Sam, to remind her of her late partner. When Sam falls ill, there is only one slim hope - that his stepbrother John may hold the key to his survival. But John has disappeared. Seeking absolution for his part in the accidental . Seller Inventory # 1428al
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The Ice Child
Seller: Bookbot, Prague, Czech Republic
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Condition: Fine. 'I am sixteen. I am as old as the century'It is 1916. Vincent is sixteen, on the brink of manhood. Vincent is aristocratic and privileged, frequenting the salons of Paris while France is at war and the city almost deserted of men. In that brutal summer, Vincent's beauty and precocity captivate two men: Marcel, some thirty years his senior, a writer and celebrated socialite; and Arthur, the twenty-one year old son of one of the servants, who is now a soldier at the front. Both relationships become love affairs of a kind - of the mind or of the body. Vincent intuitively tries to keep his passions separate, but over the weeks of indolent Parisian summer and far-off war, confidences are made, absences endured, secrets revealed. All of these men will suffer, and Vincent will lose the last vestiges of his childhood innocence. In the Absence of Men is a stunning first novel: in its daring in representing Marcel Proust as a character, in the beauty of its prose and in its delicacy of feeling. It is a quite remarkable debut. Seller Inventory # 7a5e0680-3cdd-439e-9b21-9cf8a13628ef
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