Icefields by Thomas Wharton

Jeff Rennicke and I have this deal: first he tells me what to read and then I tell him what to read, then we repeat the process. The deal keeps us from getting too bogged down in our own reading ruts: I like stories, he likes word imagery. Icefields has both.

The story of Icefields takes place between 1898 and 1925 on or near the Arcturus Glacier in the northern Canadian Rockies, near Jasper. In 1898 Dr. Edward Bryne, while crossing the glacier, falls into a crevasse. While hanging upside down, Bryne sees what he thinks is a winged human figure trapped in the ice. Bryne is rescued but the accident changes his life forever: he becomes obsessed with the glacier and spends all of his time both running from and seeking the figure in the ice.

There is more to the story than the plot. The figure in the ice is part of a series of seemingly mystic events and dreamscapes that take place throughout the book: ice sublimating into air; orchids blooming in rock; books falling to their death of shattered words; listeners that become part of the stories they hear; dead men in barber shops; and living corpses returning from war. The figure in the ice is the key, the rest are just clues to its meaning. Was the figure real? Was it a spirit or angel caught in the ice? Is it the reflection of a book with shattered words? Or is it the essence of a life unfolding, captured in the pregnant ice, waiting to be born when it sublimates at the terminus?