Keep Cool this August with 4 Stories of Ice and Snow
This month, if the heat and humidity start to get to you, think snow. These books all take us to places of awesome, unimaginable cold, but in very different ways. Join Mallory’s expedition to climb Mount Everest, brave a Colorado blizzard, see ghostly spirits blow into town with a storm, or trek to the far north after civilization as we know it has ended. Brrr. I’m feeling frosty already.
Above All Things, by Tanis Rideout
In 1924, George Mallory made his final attempt to scale Mount Everest and then vanished; his frozen body wasn’t discovered on the mountain until 1999. People of his day assumed he never reached the summit…but perhaps he did? This story alternates between George’s grand adventure and the more ordinary adventures of his wife, Ruth, back home raising three children while he’s off hogging the limelight. Fans of The Paris Wife will love this behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be married to a Great Man. Their courtship (shown in flashback) is especially moving—as when George, leaving Ruth for a climb, tears out the last page of her book, saying, “You’ll never know how it ends unless you agree to see me again.” Who wouldn’t fall in love with the guy? Such tenderness makes George’s fate all the more heartbreaking.
Stars Go Blue, by Laura Pritchett
“The fields are poured ice, rippled and waved as if a frozen lake.” As opening sentences go, this one’s a beauty—it pulled me right in and held me. Pritchett has a poet’s eye, and the Colorado landscape she describes is both wonderland and icy wasteland, able to kill a person within hours. Luckily, the main characters are a tough pair, more able than most to survive whatever Nature throws their way.
Ben and Renny are an elderly couple mourning a once-happy marriage and their murdered daughter. When the worst blizzard in years blows in, you might expect them to hunker down and wait out the storm. But news arrives that their daughter’s murderous ex-husband is about to be released from prison, and Ben—who has Alzheimer’s—wants justice. He sets out alone on an epic quest with Renny close behind, desperate to find and rescue him.
Snowblind, by Christopher Golden
For a change of pace, try this horror novel set in the picture-postcard town of Coventry, Massachusetts. There’s a large cast of characters, all written with empathy as living, breathing people you’ll swear you recognize from your own hometown, but the main character is…the storm. Filled with malevolent spirits, this storm has a will of its own.
I prefer my horror without buckets of blood, and Golden delivers, giving the townspeople psychological dilemmas every bit as suspenseful as the supernatural one. Twelve years ago Coventry was hit with a whiteout that left 18 dead, some of them (this is my favorite image) dragged out of windows by icy hands. Now, as they brace for another Nor’easter, the survivors have to face both their fear and traumatic memories of the earlier storm. There are shivers aplenty—and a climax that’ll knock your socks off.
Far North, by Marcel Theroux
Humanity has gone feral. People hunt to eat, or else hunt each other. In this National Book Award finalist, if conditions on the frozen tundra don’t kill you, your neighbors will. Our hero and self-appointed sheriff, Makepeace, has survived by being a very good shot and trusting no one. All that changes when a stranger appears.
It seems decency may not be dead, after all. Rumor has it there’s a colony of civilized humans living yet father north. To reach them, Makepeace must journey through an arctic moonscape of wolves and impasses and killing cold. The greatest danger, however, is fellow man. This is a great book if you liked The Road or A Game of Thrones, but prefer a little hope along with your suffering.
What are you reading in the dog days of August?