True North - Hardcover

Merrick, Elliott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803231407 ISBN 13: 9780803231405

Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr, 1989

Synopsis

In 1929, Elliott Merrick left his position as an advertising executive in New Jersey and headed up to Labrador. There, he worked as an unpaid volunteer for the Grenfell Mission. In 1933, he wrote this incomparable book about his experiences in the northern wilderness, living and working with trappers, American Indians and the nurse he met and married.

About this title

About the Author

Elliott Merrick was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of a New York-commuting executive. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University, Merrick took a job as a reporter with the Passaic Daily News. In 1928 he became assistant advertising manager for the National Lead Company, his father’s company, but Merrick seemed to have nature in his blood and, in 1929, he left the business world behind and joined the Grenfell Mission in Labrador, Canada, as a summer WOP (Worker without Pay). He loved Labrador and its people and was able to stay in the region by taking a teaching assignment for the Mission in Northwest River. It was there that he met and fell in love with the Mission’s resident nurse, Australian-born Kate (Kay) Austen, whom he married in 1930. They lived for a brief time in a small cabin near the current site of the huge Goose Bay Airport. After a number of adventures in Labrador, the Merricks returned to the United States, living in New Jersey and Vermont during the middle of the depression. Elliott Merrick later taught English at the University of Vermont. He is the author of seven other books, including the best-selling Northern Nurse.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

January 6
In those books of Arctic exploration that Stefansson describes as mere catalogs of hardships, there are seldom any accounts of the inconvenience of a nose, particularly a runny nose. Perhaps a nose is hardly suited to tales of Arctic feats. One wonders how Inuit manage their noses so well, how it is in the long years of evolution that they have not contrived to grow fur on them or lose them entirely. The greatest hardship of the trip to me is a raw, red nose that drips like some damp rock in a cave, simply from the cold, not from a cold. No one ever has a cold on trips like this. Colds grow only in places where every known means of science is organized to prevent them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803231407
• ISBN 13: 9780803231405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 353