The Ice Child

Book excerpt: One of history’s great unsolved mysteries is the basis for Elizabeth Cooke’s exhilarating and deeply moving extreme-adventure novel about Arctic exploration, survival, and the unshakable bond between parents and children In 1845 Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men set out for the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. They were never seen or heard from again. Now, in an eerie replay of that tragedy, renowned archaeologist and Cambridge professor Douglas Marshall has vanished in Greenland while attempting to solve the centuries-old mystery. When journalist Jo Harper interviews Marshall’s wife, it is the beginning of her own obsession with the lost expedition . . . and with Douglas Marshall. This suspenseful, keenly touching tale of adventure, love, and survival shifts back and forth between the doomed 1845 voyage, told from the perspective of young ship hand Augustus Peterman, and Jo Harper’s present-day relationship with an extraordinary man who will change her profoundly, inspiring her to undertake her own seemingly impossible journey.