The Ice-Cold Heaven

August 12, 2013
Bonné’s first novel to be published in the United States retells the story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the Antarctic, which resulted in the ship Endurance being trapped and a subsequent harrowing rescue attempt. This is well-trodden ground, to be sure, but Bonné succeeds in placing the reader firmly alongside the stricken explorers and in relating the journey through the voice of the youngest crew member, 17-year-old Merce Blackboro. Merce, a young Welshman who has stowed away on the Endurance following an even more ill-fated first sailing expedition, grows from shipboard scapegoat into something like Shackleton’s kindred spirit. The two men’s shared enthusiasm for the history of polar exploration is more than a common interest—the stories Merce reads and later retells may even hold part of the key to their survival. Bonné’s narrative illustrates Shackleton’s unorthodox but undeniably effective leadership strategies in the face of incredible odds as the men’s situation grows increasingly desperate: “Our common aim, survival, has divided us after all and alienated us from one another.” One of the book’s most moving moments is when the crew eventually realizes that the world has been engulfed in war and political turmoil while they’ve been trapped in Antarctic ice.