Rivers and Ice

Susan Pope's memoir Rivers and Ice, follows five generations of one Alaskan family evolving with the rapidly changing landscape of the North. A rafting disaster, a failed canoe journey, a dash to reach a summit while deserting her daughter in bear country. She struggles to reconcile the competing forces in her life: the lure of travel with the safety of home; the love of family with the desire for independence; and the image of who she aspires to be with the reality of her faltering attempts at marriage, career, motherhood, grandmother-hood, and physical competence. Suicide, near-death experiences, a tumbledown inheritance, the miracle of the Arctic caribou migration. Few memoirs combine love of nature with love of family so eloquently, while at the same time acknowledging that each carries the potential for so much loss and pain. Through it all, this is the story of one woman's quest to carve a place for herself in a rapidly changing land and claim her own unique power.