THE VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL

Capturing a crucial moment in the history of exploration, the mid-nineteenth century romance with the Arctic, Andrea Barrett focuses on a particular expedition and its accompanying scholar-naturalist, Erasmus Darwin Wells. Through his eyes, we meet the Narwhal's crew and its commander--obsessed with the search for an open polar sea--and encounter the far north culture of the Esquimaux. In counterpoint, we see the women left behind in Philadelphia, explorers only in imagination. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and mystery. And they finally discover--as all explorers do--not what was always there and never needed discovering, but the state of their own souls.