Author Last Name,
Author First Name,
Pages,
Binding,
Edition,
ISBN 10,
ISBN 13,
Condition,
Publisher,
Date Published,
Specifications
Author Last Name:
Barrett
Author First Name:
Andrea
Pages:
416
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
Illustrated
ISBN 10:
0393319504
ISBN 13:
9780393319507
Condition:
Used
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published:
9/17/1999
Genre:
Historical Fiction
Description
From the author of the 1996 National Book Award Winner Ship Fever.
Capturing a crucial moment in the history of exploration, the mid-nineteenth century romance with the Arctic, Andrea Barrett focuses on a particular expedition and its accompanying scholar-naturalist, Erasmus Darwin Wells. Through his eyes, we meet the Narwhal's crew and its commander—obsessed with the search for an open polar sea—and encounter the far-north culture of the Esquimaux. In counterpoint, we see the women left behind in Philadelphia, explorers only in imagination. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and mystery. And finally they discover—as all explorers do—not what was always there and never needed discovering, but the state of their own souls.
