In the Kingdom of Ice

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
By Hampton Sides (454 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4

As I've said before, I have a weird love of survival stories. I love the extremes, the testing of the human spirit, the power of nature. The drama.

This book covers--extensively--the American polar voyage of the the Jeannette in the late 1800s. So far, this was unexplored territory, and it caught the fancy not just explorers (armchair explorers or otherwise) but also the general public. Alas, the crew of the Jeannette based their voyage on a soon-to-be-debunked theory that the North Pole was a warm, freshwater bowl of water, surrounded by ice. It was just a matter of finding the right way in.

So, the Jeannette heads north. She gets stuck in ice and stays put for TWO YEARS. Then sinks. And the 33-person crew must travel over jagged, dangerous ice, aiming for Siberia. And oh, it makes for dramatic reading.

Do not, do not, do NOT google the voyage. I almost did about a dozen times, because I wanted to know would happen to everyone and I couldn't get through the 454 pages fast enough. But I didn't google it and was raptly reading, waaaaaay too late into the night. (The sign of a very good book, methinks.) What would happen to them?

Yes, this is nonfiction that reads like fiction, as good survival stories do. My one criticism is that it took FOREVER for the Jeannette to finally get to sea. I get that such a voyage requires a lot of prep---securing funding, figuring out routes, finding and renovating a ship, accumulating provisions, and so on. But at one point I snapped at my open Kindle, "Set sail already!" Sheesh.

But never you mind about that. This is good, absorbing nonfiction reading. Highly recommended.