Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

Gallery/Scout Press, 304 pages, $27.99

Portland has stuttered on the axis and turned back towards winter. After surviving an April snowstorm (quelle horreur!), of course I picked up a book about death in the Arctic! It made my piddling 30+ degree weather seem absolutely balmy.

Val Chesterfield is a professor and linguist. She has a working knowledge of some rare languages, one of which is West Greenlandic. It doesn’t come as a surprise, then, when she is asked by Professor Wyatt Speeks to see if she can communicate with a girl about eight years old who was dug out from inside a glacier, thawed, and brought back to life. Say, what?

Furthermore, Wyatt was mentor to Val’s brother Andy, her twin. Andy’s recent death right outside the front door of Wyatt’s research facility in Tarramiut Station, Greenland, has haunted Val since it happened. “Remote” doesn’t adequately describe the facility. “Cold” doesn’t begin to describe it either. Andy froze to death. He shouldn’t have been out of the main station at night, all alone. This is background to explain why Val, a depressed person with crippling anxiety, even would think about accepting Wyatt’s invitation. Also, Val’s father, an old codger, thinks Wyatt murdered Andy. He bullies Val into accepting the offer.

With a full supply of pills and the hope that there is adequate liquor at the station, Val shakily ventures forth. The research station is only accessible by plane when the weather isn’t bad. That area of the world is getting to the end of the habitable season, so the daylight is rapidly dwindling, the temperature is dropping, and the window for flying in or out is closing.

Also dropping into the station are two young polar divers, a married couple, Nora and Rajeev Chandra-Revard. They are giggly, passionate, and looking forward to the challenge of exploring how climate change has affected Arctic waters. Raj doesn’t accept that Wyatt chipped out an “ice girl” and revived her. What’s the gimmick, he wonders.

Already at the station is Wyatt’s assistant, Jeanne, a mechanic, cook, bottle washer, mysterious mother earth figure. Val will be rooming with Jeanne for the seven weeks she is scheduled to be at the station. 

Wyatt is determined to understand what the young girl has to say. So far, she has been more like a child who was raised by wolves than someone ready to communicate with everyone.

Val realizes the immense task ahead of her when she thinks the girl has not vocalized any root words Val can associate with any known language. The girl takes to drawing, however, so there is that one advantage. But all she will draw are circles. Then she graduates to a bird of sorts. Val treats her like an English-as-a-second-language student, but the girl refuses to learn in a normal fashion. Val feels frustration but also an attraction to the mystery of the girl’s origin. Is it all an elaborate hoax?

Val treats everyone with suspicion. There is no doubt Andy froze to death. But why was he outside inadequately dressed? Andy wasn’t around when the ice girl was discovered, so it can’t be related to that, could it?

There is a weather phenomenon happening around the world. A sudden storm hits all kinds of communities with freezing winds. People are flash frozen and killed before they can react, a sort of hyper-piteraq, a Greenland katabatic wind. (You can look it up, too!) Weather chaos is the curse that keeps on giving.

There is no doubt in Val’s mind that something is amiss, but is it real or is it the product of Val’s disintegrating mental state?

“Girl in Ice” is a thrilling book with a lot of hooks to catch readers who like unusual twists. Sometimes, however, the book seems to take a step forward and two steps back, which mires the book a little. Mostly, though, it ran smoothly forward. The ending was appropriately shocking. And the underlying message of climate catastrophe on the horizon has not been lost.