Helpful Score: 4
This was described as a good beach book, but was also good for winter cold reading. It weaves together a modern day story about a reporter and archeologist with an interest in the disappearance of the Franklin Expedition in 1845 in the Arctic. This was an actual event. The story is told from several points of view between the past and present. It's fast paced and satisfying that difficult family relationships are resolved in a hopeful way.
Helpful Score: 4
This was one of my all time favorite books. It was part mystery, part thriller, part historical, and part love story.
Helpful Score: 2
Really well written but I got bogged down with it. Had to force myself somewhat to finish it. It was good though...just not my cuppa tea.
Helpful Score: 2
I enjoyed the first half of this book detailing the arctic exploration and the polar bear seemingly following them. When the second half unexpectedly morphed into a fight to save a 2 year old's life from a rare life-threatening disease worse than Leukemia, I completely lost interest. Don't get me wrong, the book is okay but I tend to stay away from these topics as they are way to depressing to be reading for pleasure.
Helpful Score: 1
Great adventure and love story. Very different. Loved the arctic piece!
As a student of polar exploration I looked forward to reading this book about Franklin's expedition. This is an interesting but frustrating melange of past and present, highlighting the woes of a current-day family dealing with obsession about the Franklin expedition and historical fiction regarding several crew members while actually immersed in the survival story. Both past and present stories went back and forth, both were truly stories of courage and survival in the face of overwhelming odds. Unfortunately, this creative presentation didn't appeal to me as a follower of the historic explorations, but it was a good story and compellingly related. Not a bad book, just not for me.
When Jo Harper falls in love with maverick archaelogist Doug Marshall, she also comes to share his fascination with the 1845 disappearance of the Franklin expedition. Doug has spent his career trying to solve the historic mystery of the Arctic tragedy, sacrificing his first marriage and his relationship with his son. Then a shocking accident pulls Jo deeper into the obsession. Her own son is dying, and her only hope to save him lies in the icy grip of the dangerous north. To find the one man who can help her, Jo must retrace the uncharted trail that has claimed so many lives-not for glory or fame, but for love.
Elizabeth McGregor has the gift of seamlessly blending past with present, fact with fiction. She performs this feat brilliantly in The Ice Child, a spellbinding tale of triumph and tragedy. Archaeologist Douglas Marshall has long been obsessed with uncovering the fate of the missing crewmen who sailed under the direction of Sir John Franklin 150 years earlier, seeking a Northwest Passage through the Arctic. When Marshall himself disappears during his latest expedition, journalist Jo Harper is assigned to write a story about him. As a result, she becomes enthralled with both the man and the ghosts he's been following.
When Marshall is eventually found, he and Jo meet and become lovers. But their plans to marry are cut short by a horrible tragedy that forces Jo to cope, by herself, with an unexpected pregnancy; Marshall's embittered ex-wife; and Marshall's 20-year-old son, John, who blames himself for what has happened. Jo then gives birth to her son, who, at the age of three, is diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease, and whose only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant from his half brother. But John can't be found, because he has disappeared into the Arctic to follow in his father's footsteps, searching out the fate of the Franklin expedition.
When Marshall is eventually found, he and Jo meet and become lovers. But their plans to marry are cut short by a horrible tragedy that forces Jo to cope, by herself, with an unexpected pregnancy; Marshall's embittered ex-wife; and Marshall's 20-year-old son, John, who blames himself for what has happened. Jo then gives birth to her son, who, at the age of three, is diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease, and whose only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant from his half brother. But John can't be found, because he has disappeared into the Arctic to follow in his father's footsteps, searching out the fate of the Franklin expedition.
