Great book, highly recommend. ( )

Twenty-five years before, a doctor fell into a crevasse, and was trapped there, losing his backpack and all the objects in it. Currently, someone finds it, the doctor perhaps, on his return visit, and the orchids in the cans still survive after all these years.

I'm reviewing this book from memory. A principal incident in the book occurs when the doctor tumbles into a massive crack in the glacier, and becomes disoriented - is he rightside up, or upside down? - in the all-encompassing white of the ice. The book involves the strife of developers and nature as a main theme, but seems to hang its hat on the glacier-rules-everything peg.

This book will transport you. This book will set you to wondering. ( )

Quiet, understated, well-written, and different. I'm glad I read it. Full review: http://www.canadianauthors.net/w/whar... ( )

Wow!

Doctor Ned Byrne falls into an ice crevice while exploring a glacier. He is quickly rescued, but what he has seen in the ice haunts him for the next 1/4 century.

This is a lovely, sparsely written, poetic novel about icefields -- those found on glaciers, and those found within people who, for their own reasons, hold themselves a little separate from the world.

In the early part of the last centry, a group of people live in Jasper, Alberta. They are all fascinated by the icefields -- Sara, a native woman of mysterious background; Trask who builds a hotel; Freya the intrepid explorer; Hal, a poet-turned-guide; Elspeth, a scottish immigrant and Dr. Byrne. Their lives intersect, yet each remains ultimately alone. ( )

what does it say about this novel that i remember very little of it, except for the fact that i read it?
I remember the first 12 pages or so seemed very compelling, apparently not so much after that...