Even though I have moved away from Alaska, I'm still very interested in stories of the arctic.
This is the true story of an expedition begun in 1921 by an "explorer" and lecturer called Stefansson. He insisted that the frozen north should be called "the Friendly Arctic," and that it was no more "dangerous" to live there than in a modern city. He set up an expedition with four young men from the lower forty-eight and one Eskimo woman and sent them to live on an arctic island for a year. Wrangel Island, their destination, is an ice-bound and desolate place north of Siberia, and Stefansson planned to "colonize" it for Canada, even though the island had already been claimed by Russia. (I'm using a lot of quote marks here because I really didn't like this guy.)
You can guess that this expedition didn't end well.
This book was pretty good; I probably would have like a fictionalization of the story better because this version is not very personal.
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