Books Set in Antarctica and the Arctic

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is based on a little-known story of the first woman ever to set foot on Antarctica.

In the early 1930s, a ship setting sail from Cape Town carried three women, each vying to become the first woman to set foot on the icy continent. Ingrid is the wife of a Norwegian whaling magnate who has dreamed of traveling to Antarctica since she was a young girl. Lillemore tricked her way onto the ship. And Mathilde is a grieving widow brought aboard the ship by her calculating parents-in-law.

Book Summary

Bernadette lives with her husband and her teenage daughter in Seattle – a city where she’s never felt she fits in. She was once a renowned architect, but now spends most of her time in the house hiding from the other moms of her daughter’s elite prep school.

Unlike her Microsoft employee husband, Elgie, who has fully embraced the granola-eating, public transport-using, bike-riding culture of 2010s Seattle, Bernadette spends her days in the house relying on a virtual assistant in India for many of her daily tasks. This becomes a real problem when her daughter’s stellar report card earns her a family cruise to Antarctica, and Bernadette becomes overwhelmed by the planning and preparations. When Bernadette disappears before the trip, her daughter Bee is determined to track her down, unraveling a web of secrets.

Much of this book is told in epistolary form, including notes from Bee’s school, email exchanges between Bernadette and her virtual assistant, and catty moms communicating about Bernadette’s eccentricities.

Book Summary

In 1897, a polar expedition went terribly wrong. The crew of the Belgica was ready for adventure when they set sail on a three-year expedition to uncharted Antarctica and the magnetic South Pole. However, they hadn’t even cleared South America yet when everything seemed to be going wrong. But they pushed forward into freezing water, chasing glory for Belgium.

That decision led to the Belgica and her crew becoming stuck in the ice for an entire sunless Arctic winter and being driven to the brink of madness. The author tells this compelling non-fiction tale with extra detail thanks to exclusive access to the ship’s logbook.

Book Summary

For two weeks each year, Deb and Keller leave the frustrations of their separate lives behind to study the habits of penguins in Antarctica. Set against the landscape of glacial mountains, icebergs, and frigid waters, this is where the two feel at home, and where they share a brief romance each year.

This year, however, Keller doesn’t show up on the expedition ferry to their research destination. When the ferry receives a distress signal from a sinking cruise liner in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean, she learns that Keller is aboard.

This novel of love and loss dives deep into the wonders of Antarctica and the human heart.

Book Summary

This classic book recounts Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. The author was the youngest member of Scott’s team and one of three who survived the notorious Winter Journey. In this book, he draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of other team members to provide a detailed account of this legendary expedition.

Book Summary

In 2015, at age 55, Henry Worsley set off on an adventure that he had been dreaming of almost his entire life – walking across Antarctica alone. The British special forces officer had long idolized Ernest Shackleton and felt a strong connection to his story, perhaps because he was related to one of Shackleton’s men. 

In 2008, Worsley visited Antarctica with two other crew descendants. Despite the harsh environment they experienced, he knew he wanted to spend more time in this fascinating region and planned his even more extreme solo trek. This biography is the perfect mix of history, adventure, and geography as the author takes you through each step of Worsley’s journey.

Book Summary

Antarctica is the only continent on Earth where humans could never survive unaided. Many books have come out of our fascination with the frigid region, but this one strives to truly capture the whole story.

Drawing on her broad travels across the continent, science writer Gabrielle Walker weaves all the significant threads of life on the vast ice sheet into an intricate tapestry, illuminating what it feels like to be there and why it draws so many different kinds of people.

We witness cutting-edge science experiments through Gabrielle, visit the South Pole, lodge with American, Italian, and French researchers, drive snowdozers, drill ice cores, and listen for the message Antarctica is sending us about our future in an age of global warming.

Book Summary

When Archaeologist Leah explores a Native American cliff dwelling that had been abandoned for 800 years, she finds a previously undiscovered massacre. With the human remains, she finds rare, brilliantly colored granite crystals. These crystals are only known to exist in a frozen mountain range in central Antarctica, so how did they end up in New Mexico?

Leah’s estranged husband is a hiking guide and the only person who can help her unravel the mystery. But, when they make a major discovery in Antarctica that impacts both science and history, governments get involved.

Book Summary

Franny packed up her research gear and talked her way onto a fishing boat in Greenland to follow the Arctic terns on what could be their last migration from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica.

Set in an unspecified date in the future, this novel has dystopian qualities. As the boat travels farther from civilization and safety, it becomes clear that Franny’s journey is as much about running away as it is about following the birds. Franny’s tale and journey are equally heartbreaking and breathtaking.

Book Summary

Lina is a typical 15-year-old Lithuanian girl who loves painting, drawing, and boys. But one night in 1941, Soviet officers burst into her home, tearing her family away from their comfortable life. She and her mother and brother are forced onto a train with no idea where they are headed.

Under Stalin’s orders, they are sent to a work camp under the cruelest and coldest conditions. Just getting to the camp requires crossing the Arctic Circle But, somehow, Lina finds comfort in her drawings. She depicts the scenes she witnesses daily in hopes that they’ll provide proof of all they are forced to endure.

Book Summary

In March of 2012, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. She was in graduate school then, and the extra time doing lab research made her crave studying in the wilderness.

A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, this book is said to pull you in early and take you alongside the couple on their great adventure. The trip is difficult, with life-threatening dangers encountered more than once, but they are also surrounded by the well-described beauty of nature.

Book Summary

Nate Burke needs a change after watching his partner die on duty as a Baltimore police officer. When the remote town of Lunacy, Alaska needs a police chief, Nate packs up his life and heads to the tiny frontier town.

While he was looking for an escape to a low-crime area, his detective skills are soon needed. The body of someone missing for 15 years is found, and it’s clear he has been murdered. Soon, there is another town death, which appears to be a suicide and confession, but Nate isn’t buying it.

Along the way, Nate develops a complicated relationship with Meg, the daughter of the murder victim. You’ll be drawn into this town’s characters, the beautiful scenery, and of course, the mystery!

Book Summary

This book is part memoir, part travelogue, and the incredible story of how Laura Galloway’s life changed after an ancestry test to find her roots. When the test revealed shared DNA with the Sámi people, the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic tundra, she was inspired to learn more. Along the way, a relationship with a Sámi reindeer herder led her to leave New York for the tiny town of Kautokeino, Norway.

However, when the relationship ended after six months, Laura wasn’t ready to leave the remote community behind. She stayed for six years, trying to learn the language but also trying to make peace with her difficult childhood and to discover what it means to truly belong.

Book Summary

Subtitled “The Grand and Terrible Voyage of the USS Jeanette,” this non-fiction tells the story of the United States’ aspiration to be the first nation to reach the North Pole. US Navy Captain George Washington DeLong set sail on the JSS Jeanette with a team of 32 men. They departed San Francisco, heading deep into Arctic waters.

Two years into the expedition, Jeannette’s hull was breached by an impassable stretch of ice. The crew was forced to abandon the ship into the icy water. Shipwrecked a thousand miles north of Siberia, they are forced to march across the endless ice pack as they struggle to survive.

Book Summary

If you’re a fan of action-packed thrillers, you might enjoy this Arctic mystery about a wildlife biologist. Alex gets an opportunity to study threatened polar bears in the Canadian Arctic with a small team of researchers. She spends days flying over remote areas by helicopter, using a tranquilizer gun to temporarily freeze the bears so she can get close to them.

As the study continues, enough unfortunate events occur that it’s clear someone doesn’t want her to complete her work. From missing equipment and the sudden resignation of her pilot to late-night intruders, it’s clear she isn’t welcome. Things escalate when the helicopter catches fire mid-flight, trapping the team on the frozen ice far from civilization.

Book Summary

Set in medieval times at the edge of the Russian Arctic wilderness, this magical fantasy tale draws on the history of Russian fairytales.

Vasilisa spends the long, cold winter nights around the fire with her siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales, and her favorite is that of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. The nurse teaches them to honor the spirits of the house, yard, and forest to protect their homes from evil.

When Vasilisa’s mom dies, her husband remarries a woman from Moscow who forbids the children from honoring the household spirits. Soon, signs of evil are all around – crops are failing, and misfortune strikes the village. Vasilisa must defy the people she loves and call on her hidden and dangerous gifts to protect her family from a threat as frightening as any in her nurse’s fairytales.

Book Summary

This is the true story of Anne Hobbs who arrived in harsh and beautiful Alaska in 1927, at the young age of nineteen. She quickly discovered that running a ramshackle schoolhouse would expose her to more than just the elements.

After she allowed Native American children into her class and fell in love with a half-Inuit man, she learned the meanings of prejudice and perseverance, irrational hatred, and unconditional love.

“People get as mean as the weather,” she discovered, but they were also capable of great good.

Book Summary

In 1925, the remote town of Nome, Alaska, suffered a severe diphtheria outbreak. While scientists had created a lifesaving serum, it was located 1000 miles away, and there was no clear transport route. Roads didn’t exist, and planes couldn’t fly in the harsh blizzard conditions. But without the serum, death was inevitable for those affected.

Inspired by the annual Iditarod race, sled dog teams were called upon to make the long, treacherous journey. While you may know about one of the dogs, Balto, this is a deeper look at the whole event and journey.