Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. Greer Macallister uses the true story of Lady Jane Franklin's tireless attempts to find her husband's lost expedition as a jumping-off point to spin a novel of bravery, intrigue, perseverance and hope.
In her gripping fourth novel, The Arctic Fury, Greer Macallister (Woman 99; Girl in Disguise) weaves together two timelines and multiple narrative strands ... Macallister examines sexism and racism in the pre-Civil War United States, and builds a compelling mosaic of a story. She also deftly uses [...] multiple viewpoints to call into question the notion of truth ... The Arctic Fury is not for the faint of heart: at times Macallister thrusts her characters almost aggressively into hardship, peril and gruesome situations. It is not a clear-cut narrative of adventure, love or justice, although it contains the seeds of all those things. But it is certainly compelling. Readers who love historical fiction, strong women and unusual settings will find all three--as well as a couple of truly inventive twists--in Macallister's novel.
The real Lady Jane Franklin sponsored a number of expeditions to find her explorer husband, Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin, after he and his men went missing in the Arctic. Though there’s no record of an all-female expedition, that hasn’t stopped Greer Macallister from writing a cracking good story about one in her fourth novel, The Arctic Fury ... Macallister’s book, written in prose as crisp as an Arctic summer, reminds us that women had all kinds of adventures during this period, from heading out into the frontier to holding conventions for women’s rights and writing antislavery books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Arctic Fury is a tribute to one young woman’s leadership and genius for survival.
Macallister (Woman 99) delivers an exciting if thin historical thriller based on real events ... Macallister pulls no punches depicting the grisly, dangerous realities of 19th-century Arctic journeys, and while tensions run high throughout to the shocking conclusion, the prose is run-of-the-mill [...] and the characters one-dimensional ... While Macallister’s fans will enjoy, others will be disappointed.
