Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube : Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
Author(s): Blair Braverman
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North.
Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was nineteen, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska.
By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Blair faces down physical exhaustion—being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a whiteout blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police—and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.
Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of the journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.
Review(s):
“Her descriptions of the natural world are arresting, and powerfully convey her conviction that ‘how to be cold’ means ‘how to live.’”
“As a storyteller and a stylist, Braverman is remarkably skilled, with a keen sense of visceral detail that borders on sublime. Her ability to draw readers into heart-pounding action sequences is what makes the book so courageous and original as a travel narrative and a memoir of self-discovery.”
“Remarkable. . . . It’s amazing to watch as she develops backbone and grit, determined not to let anyone or anything stand between her and the icy landscape she loves so much.”
“This summer, readers have their pick of female narrators traversing both internal and external terrain. But few stand out as much as Blair Braverman’s Arctic memoir, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.”
“Braverman left her California home at 18 to learn dog sledding in Norway. As she chronicles in this bold adventure memoir, she’s returned again and again to the coldest places on earth in search of a fearlessness frequently off-limits to women.”
“An enchanting memoir of exploration and adventure, self-discovery and self-doubt. . . . Ice Cube hugs everything tight, turning experiences exotic and fearsome into moments tenderly funny and pure.”
“. . . a richly insightful work whose bold but delicately delivered honesty has much to teach us. . . . Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube is gorgeous, moving and universally resonant. Most of all, it’s important.”
“A thoughtful meditation on a lifelong attraction to the cold.”
“a lyrical, understated writer. . . . [an] unusual memoir [that] will resonate with anyone who has ever chased a dream through a thicket of difficulty.”
“Blair Braverman confronts hostility and harassment in her memoir of adventure in the wilderness.”
ISBN: 9780062311573