First published 2015
In 2010, novelist Kathleen Winter boards a Russian vessel bound for the Northwest Passage. She travels as writer in residence alongside tourists, biologists, geologists, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. The ship carries them from Greenland to Baffin Island, then through waters that climate change has opened to navigation, reaching the Beaufort Sea. Winter observes how warming transforms the Arctic landscape. Polar bears now mate with grizzlies, creating hybrid offspring. Five nations eye buried treasures beneath the thawing ground. Inuit communities face difficult choices between embracing new economic opportunities that the passage's opening will bring and protecting their traditional ways of life. Winter documents this shifting world where ancient ice gives way to modern pressures, where wildlife adapts to survive, and where indigenous people navigate between old customs and new possibilities.
Genres: adventure, environment, non-fiction, 21st-century, climate-change
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water
Setting: Baffin Island, Beaufort Sea, Greenland
Period: 2010
321 pages · Paperback · Boréal