Midnight to the North: The Inuit Woman Who Saved the Polaris Expedition Tapa dura - 2002

de Sheila B. Nickerson

In 1871, Charles Francis Hall's Polaris expedition set out to be the first official American party to reach the North Pole. Five months later, the Polaris had become locked in ice and Hall was dead-likely murdered. The expedition members were set adrift for six months on the icy seas

In Midnight to the North, Sheila Nickerson brings to life the emotional struggle of a wildly various group of people forced to stay together-despite one another's self-centered failings-during circumstances of extreme desperation. Imaginatively re-creating Tookoolito's life, she describes the Inuit woman's decades-long relationship with Hall; her presentation to the English court and experience as an exhibit in P. T. Barnum's museum; and the undermining of her sturdy faith in her native heritage by Hall's stern and often treacherous world.

A meticulously researched, gripping story of awesome peril and fascinating insight, Midnight to the North debunks contemporary Polaris accounts and reveals an untold side of Arctic exploration.