WHITE HEAT

The arctic is in my soul.  The decade and more I have spent in the Arctic and the sub-arctic have branded me.   The tundra, the frozen rivers, the aurora, the arctic wind, bush planes, the arctic people – these memories are stored in some recess of my mind, and on dark, cold winter nights when the wind is howling outside our cabin, places and faces come back to me.

This is probably why I am drawn to Arctic stories.   I am presently reading White Heat by M. J. McGrath.  

Eddie Kiglatuk is the best, and only woman guide on Ellesmere Island, A Canadian outpost off the northern coast of Greenland.    Like everyone else in the village she struggles with alcoholism.  When one of her clients is killed on a hunt, she is held responsible by the village elders. 

This story is an accurate view of a remote Native village: close family allegiances, village politics, distrust of outsiders and the social dysfunction caused by alcoholism – along with a page turner Arctic mystery.
 

“To the Inuit, eating human flesh was merely a survival tool of last resort.”

If that doesn’t grab your interest…

the Ol’Bizzard