True North

In 1929, at the age of 24, Elliott Merrick left his position as an advertising executive in New Jersey and headed up to Labrador to work as an unpaid volunteer for the Grenfell Mission. In 1933 he wrote True North about his experiences in the northern wilderness, living and working with trappers, Indians and with the nurse he met and married in a remote community. The book describes the hard work and severe conditions, along with the joy and friendship he and his wife experienced.

Refusing "to labor in the frenzied city . . . at a task patently not worth the doing," the author moved during the late 1920s to Labrador. Most of this book comprises the journal of a winter hunting trip taken with experienced guides as well as with Merrick's wife, for whom the allure of the North is equally powerful. Endurance is a point of pride for them; despite constant cold and hunger, despite mishaps (Merrick accidentally shot himself in the thigh, then nearly chopped off his toe with an ax), the Merricks adore this land of frosts and wastes so stark that a discarded matchstick "looms as big as a house." Replete with local history and amusing yarns, the journal also includes such arcana as the best ways to wash underwear in the frozen North and how to construct sunglasses to prevent snow blindness. This reissue of a 1935 work is a fascinating, at times magical, chronicle of husbands and wives who, due to long separations and the extreme hardships under which they toil, regard each other as heroes and heroines.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.