I didn’t hesitate to read Journey Through Fire and Ice, because Alaska fascinates me. When I was lucky enough to read a review copy, I dived right in.
As a tour operator, I was tasked with escorting many group tours to Alaska. Because of that, I read as many books on Alaska as I could find. In all those books however, I never found one that kept me turning the pages like Journey Through Fire and Ice.
Journey Through Fire and Ice: Shattered Dreams Above the Arctic Circle, by Deanne Burch, 277-pages, Copywrite 2021, published by Authority Publishing.
Deanne Burch was young (23-years-old), naïve (had lived a sheltered life in the city) and had a sense of duty to her marriage vows (that few of could even imagine). The transparency with which she writes about following her new husband to the Arctic Circle, is spell binding. Eating foods that you abhor, enduring conditions you would never have dreamed of in your worst nightmare, and making friends with people with whom you don’t know their language? What a story.
Kivalina is a city and village in Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, United States. The population is 374 as of the 2010 census. The island on which the village lies is threatened by rising sea levels and coastal erosion caused by climate change. It is an understatement when Deanne says, “It was more challenging than we’d anticipated and in the end, it defined who we were and what we did, long after we left.”
I think what I enjoyed most, was her introspection and her focus on the people themselves. A good writer, her stories and photos made me feel that I would like them as well. It wasn’t the wonderful people she lived with that made me keep turning the pages however, it was the fear that she wasn’t going to make it.
This would be a great book to read in a book book club – full of discussions.
The book is available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com
