num_pages: 288
description: Winner of:The Banff Grand National Prize for LiteratureThe Writers Guild of Alberta Best First Book AwardThe Commonwealth Best First Novel Prize (Caribbean and Canada Region)At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Acturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse . . .Nearly sixty feet below the surface, Byrne is wedged upside down between the narrowing walls of a chasm, fighting his desire to sleep. The ice in front of him is lit with a pale blue-green radiance. There, embedded in he pure, antediluvian glacier, Byrne sees something that will inextricably link him to the vast bed of ice, and the people who inhabit this strange corner of the world. In this moment, his life becomes a quest to uncover the mystery of the icefield that almost became his tomb.Within the deceptively simple framework of a tourist guidebook, Icefields takes a breathtaking, imaginative look at the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths. Here is an impressive literary landscape, and an expedition unlike any you have ever experienced.
language: English
title: Icefields
titlecomplete: Icefields
genres: Canada, Historical, Adventure, Novels, Literature, Contemporary, Canadian Literature, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 997
places: Alberta
awards: awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Boardman Tasker Prize
category: Mountain Literature, awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best First Book in Caribbean and Canada
publisher: Washington Square Press