Into the Ice: The Northwest Passage, the Polar Sun, and a 175-Year-Old Mystery

Synnott (The Impossible Climb) delivers a thrilling account of his 2022 journey through Canada’s inhospitable Artic islands in search of the truth about what happened to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845. Synnott gives glowing descriptions of the landscape (“Dark streaks of rain slanted down into the valleys, where fog poured into the sea like vapor from a witch’s cauldron”) while recapping heart-pounding encounters with blizzards, gales, polar bears, and an Arctic typhoon—all in a 47-foot fiberglass sailboat that could crack open like a walnut if caught in the ice. Along the way, he recounts the lethal history of those who have attempted to sail the Northwest Passage—the once fabled route from the Atlantic to the Pacific that, due to global warming, has recently become occasionally navigable. While some clues about the Franklin Expedition’s fate had already been discovered by previous explorers, Synnott’s goal was to locate the tomb of its leader, John Franklin, which is believed by researchers to hold the expedition’s logbooks. Though he doesn’t ultimately find it, he develops a strong hypothesis about its location based on the oft-overlooked oral testimony of Inuits and his own archival sleuthing. Synnott and a single crewmate also, astonishingly, complete Franklin’s journey, fully traversing the Northwest Passage—one of fewer than 100 vessels to have done so to date. It’s a page-turner. (Apr.)