One Day The Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead

in This Unforgettable Debut Novel Clare Dudman Has Imaginatively Re-created The Life Of The German Scientist Alfred Wegener, Whose Theory Of Continental Drift-derided By His Contemporaries-would Eventually Revolutionize Our Perception Of The World. Wegener's Irresistible Urge To Discover The Unknown Takes Him From The Horrors Of World War I's Trenches To Several Lengthy Expeditions Across The Unexplored Ice Of Greenland, An Extraordinary Quest That-with The Support Of A Remarkable Woman-gives Birth To A Powerful Idea Worth Fighting For. Distinguished By Its Evocation Of The Unforgiving Beauty Of The Arctic, This Stunningly Written Tale Of Obsession And Courage Will Thrill Readers Of Scientific History And The Best Adventure Writing.

the New Yorker

in 1930, The German Meteorologist Alfred Wegener Disappeared On An Expedition To Greenland; Six Months Later, His Body Was Found, Perfectly Preserved, Beneath The Ice. Dudman Takes This As The Starting Point Of Her Novel, A Fictional Autobiography In Which Wegener Embodies The Scientist As Man Of Action, Launching Hydrogen-balloon Flights, Spelunking Down Frozen Crevasses, And Racing Across Glaciers As The Ice Cracks. Between Exploits, He Investigates The Origins Of Rain And The Craters Of The Moon, And Fends Off Attacks On His Theory Of Continental Drift—dismissed At The Time As Far-fetched But Now Widely Accepted. As A Narrator, Wegener Is Firmly Rooted In His Time, Almost To A Fault; Occasionally, One Wishes That The Prose Were Less Restrained And That The Author Had Given Her Subject’s Life More Of An Arc. Still, Dudman Artfully Channels Wegener’s Voice—prim And Fastidious, But Filled With Longing—so Convincingly That Her Book Reads Like An Artifact Of Old World Exploration.