the frozen river book review

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(as of Jan 06, 2025 06:07:15 UTC - Details)

“A remarkable piece of forensic deduction.”—Margaret Atwood

The internationally-bestselling account of the Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition, and the thrilling scientific investigation that spurred the decades-long hunt for its recovery—now with a new afterword on the discovery of its lost ships: Erebus and Terror.

“Chilling . . . will keep you up nights turning pages.”—The Chicago Tribune

In 1845, Sir John Franklin and his men set out to “penetrate the icy fastness of the north, and to circumnavigate America.” And then they disappeared. The truth about what happened to Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition was shrouded in mystery for more than a century.

Then, in 1984, Owen Beattie and his team exhumed two crew members from a burial site in the North for forensic evidence, to shocking results. But the most startling discovery didn’t come until 2014, when a team commissioned by the Canadian government uncovered Erebus, the lost ship.

Frozen in Time is a riveting deep dive into one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time, and the team of brilliant scientists that unleashed its secrets from the ice.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Greystone Books; Fourth edition (June 13, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1771641738
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1771641739
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
Reviewer: LIZARD C
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I great book that covers the Franklin expedition!
Review: This book is filled with great information about the Franklin Expedition and the explorers who went in search of them! Great read that is worth it if you’re looking for anything involving the history and the general curiosity around the expedition!

Reviewer: E. Nelson
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Interesting read, first half is best
Review: This is a real quick read, a few hours to go through the whole book. First half is interesting, second half gets a bit dry.

Reviewer: Jippy
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent
Review: This was an excellent, fascinating page-turner. Absolutely loved this. It was well written and well researched. Sometimes with nonfiction, even when the subject matter is really fascinating, the book is just a plodding disaster (I'm looking at you, The Indifferent Stars Above). Not here. This is well paced and keeps your attention. I highly recommend giving this one a read.

Reviewer: ExAdirondacker
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Updated Edition
Review: I originally bought this book in 1987 when it was first published. The story is so compelling that I often return to it. I recently purchased the kindle version an was pleasantly surprised to find additional content up to 2016 when they actually found the two missing ships. After almost 36 years, it was a grand finish to a story that began 171 years ago.

Reviewer: Randy Pendergrass
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Historically accurate. The true story is presented well.
Review: Great piece of history. An event in a time of changing attitudes and beliefs. Good to hear the truth from trustworthy sources.

Reviewer: Laurie Kelley
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Fate of Franklin: What Really Happened
Review: “Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition” is a fascinating account of the Arctic explorations during the Heroic Age of Exploration of the 1800s, mostly by the British. The overall goal was to discover the Northwest Passage, that would allow easier trade to the Orient. But also to claim the polar regions for the British Empire. The 1845 voyage of Sir John Franklin, on HMS Erebus and Terror, in which all perished, became legend.And this legend, in addition to launching about 30 more rescue and investigation ships over the next two decades to find what happened, also led the author Beattie to visit in 1984 and 1986, to exhume the corpses of three sailors on Franklin’s expedition, whose graves were eventually found, and determine the cause of death. The remains reveal horrific suffering, which everyone previously attributed to scurvy. But Beattie shows with utmost skill and perseverance that the tins of preserved food on board contained lethal quantities of lead.I agree with the reviewer who said this is really like two books: one about historic polar exploration, focusing mostly on Franklin; and one about the 1984 scientific investigation. There is lots of information about what it was like to live (and suffer) on these voyages. There is lots of great information about the many polar voyages and personalities. I love books about polar exploration and learned a lot from this account. But the book is not very well edited; there is repetition, events out of chronological order, but for me that was minor. The scientific journey of 1984-86 went into great detail about the visit, digging up the coffins, examining the bodies. Probably information that most lay people would not appreciate as much. I understand the need to document this, as Beattie has done a great service to answer some long-standing questions about the fate of the Franklin expedition. But I think nonscientific people might not find it as interesting. Very jarring and disturbing are the photos of the corpses. I was not prepared to see that, and I am not squeamish. It was unnecessary and eerie. It was also odd to have the author speak of himself in the third-person. But overall, thumbs up, great work, and a great additional to my library on polar exploration.

Reviewer: Harry J. Foxwell, PhD
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent detailed story of Franklin expedition and research for failure.
Review: I was not looking for novel-style exposition, and was not bothered by the detail, style, and structure. It was indeed a technical report of the expedition's reasons for failure including the finding of serious lead poisoning effects. That the Royal Navy could not consider testing food tins as a source for the debilitating toxin is the real tragedy; blind adherence to tradition is yet again shown to be problematic. A good read, and from other review suggestions, better than other efforts.

Reviewer: BARBIE Novinger
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very long slog and depressing
Review: It was thorough and the author clearly did his homework but it was so depressing and the forward basically told the whole story in five pages so I felt like after that it was just details of the same thing. Could have been summed up in a thin book. Don't recommend it unless you are into details of death and causes.

Reviewer: Zoe Walker
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I really, really enjoyed this book. The authors clearly outline the history without rambling and go into the details everyone wants to know about! This is a must-read for any academic in a related field, however, even without an academic background any person could read this book and enjoy it because the authors explain everything so clearly. The images are incredible (although a little macabre at times) and serve to enhance the story the authors tell.I would recommend this book.

Reviewer: Lista de Palavras
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The edition is awful, newsprint paper (newspaper paper), small letters. The first half of the book is good, it has to do with Franklyn Expedition. The second half is very bad, it's only about details of recent expeditions to collect info about the fate of Erebus and Terror, very boring. This is not an edition to keep in the shelf, it's to read and discard, unfortunately.

Reviewer: Otro_cliente_de_Amazon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Magnífica obra divulgativa sobre la expedición de Franklin de 1845. Muy recomendable para interesados en la época, la exploración del Ártico y, sobre todo, el desastroso final de la ya mencionada expedición. Como siempre, excelente servicio de Amazon.

Reviewer: DSpencer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Super book

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: An excellent account of the history and ongoing fascination with the Franklin expedition. The hardships endured by the crew and their stoic fight to survive and the desperation is well documented. The varioussearch parties funding and documenting clues to the disaster all pieced together in one volume. Highly recommended.