Afterlands

"A magnificent novel" based on the 1872 Polaris expedition that left crewmembers marooned on an ice floe off the coast of Greenland (TheNew York Times Book Review).
In 1871, nineteen men, women, and children, voyaging on the Arctic explorer USS Polaris found themselves cast adrift on an ice floe as their ship began to founder. Based on one of the most remarkable events in polar history, Afterlands tells the haunting story of this small society of castaways — a white and a black American, five Germans, a Dane, a Swede, an Englishman, and two Inuit families — and the harrowing six months they spend marooned in the Arctic, struggling to survive both the harsh elements and one another. As the group splinters into factions along ethnic and national lines, rivalries — complicated by sexual desire, unrequited love, extreme hunger, and suspicion — begin to turn violent. Steven Heighton's provocative novel fills in...