On Thin Ice

Alberta Children's/Young Adult Book of the Year winner 2007

White Ravens: International Youth Library selection of outstanding books, 2007

ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards Honorable Mention - Young Adult Fiction 2006

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2007

Ashley Anowiak is in search of a murderous polar bear that may be real or mythical. The only thing for certain is that what she discovers will change her life - and her community's - forever.

In spite of its name, no one in the tiny troubled hamlet of Nanurtalik "the place with polar bears" can remember seeing a polar bear in decades. But when a teenager's dismembered body is discovered on a nearby ice road, everyone fears polar bears have returned. The community is thrown into chaos as another suspected bear attack sparks a flury of bullets that whiz through the town during a blinding four-day blizzard. Was it a real or phantom bear? No one can say for sure.

Ashley Anowiak is swept into this storm of confusion by her special link with polar bears expressed through the magic of her art and the terror of her dreams. She finds herself on the trail of Nanurluk, a giant bear that has haunted her people for thousands of years.

Ashley's bear hunt leads from the frozen catacombs beneath Itkiqtuqjuaq to the jumbled ice fields covering the Arctic Ocean. As she closes in on the bear, Ashley's inner and outer worlds are torn apart, leaving her desperate for any stability she can find.

This is the story of a gifted northern youth struggling to find her true home in a fast-changing arctic, where culture, climate and landscapeseem to be crumbling all around her.

Alberta Children's/Young Adult Book of the Year winner 2007

White Ravens: International Youth Library selection of outstanding books, 2007

ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards Honorable Mention - Young Adult Fiction 2006

Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice, 2007

Ashley Anowiak is in search of a murderous polar bear that may be real or mythical. The only thing for certain is that what she discovers will change her life - and her community's - forever.

In spite of its name, no one in the tiny troubled hamlet of Nanurtalik "the place with polar bears" can remember seeing a polar bear in decades. But when a teenager's dismembered body is discovered on a nearby ice road, everyone fears polar bears have returned. The community is thrown into chaos as another suspected bear attack sparks a flury of bullets that whiz through the town during a blinding four-day blizzard. Was it a real or phantom bear? No one can say for sure.

Ashley Anowiak is swept into this storm of confusion by her special link with polar bears expressed through the magic of her art and the terror of her dreams. She finds herself on the trail of Nanurluk, a giant bear that has haunted her people for thousands of years.

Ashley's bear hunt leads from the frozen catacombs beneath Itkiqtuqjuaq to the jumbled ice fields covering the Arctic Ocean. As she closes in on the bear, Ashley's inner and outer worlds are torn apart, leaving her desperate for any stability she can find.

This is the story of a gifted northern youth struggling to find her true home in a fast-changing arctic, where culture, climate and landscapeseem to be crumbling all around her.

VOYA

Set in the remote Arctic village of Nanurtalik, this novel follows Ashley as she journeys on the shaman path chosen for her through the Inuit line of her father. Disturbed by haunting-sometimes frightening-dreams of a gigantic polar bear that seems bent on destroying her, Ashley furiously draws her dreams onto paper, capturing the very essence of the bear within. The ice fields around Nanurtalik were once populated with the bears, which were hunted by the local natives for their meat and warm skins. The bears have been gone for many years, but signs are showing that they might be returning. Ashley senses that one of the bears is calling to her through her dreams, but she does not know why. As the story unfolds, Ashley slowly learns the importance of her dreams, her heritage, and her destiny. This novel is told with richness of language, culture, and emotion, but its sense of place sparkles brightest. Bastedo painfully describes how the changing world climate is upsetting the delicate, beautiful ecosystem of northern Alaska, and this powerful anomaly of nature grips Nanurtalik in a vise of unpredictability. The characters are fully formed, each with his or her own strengths and frailties. The point of view shifts from Ashley's dreams to her reality to the bear on the ice with ease, and each speaks with an authentic voice. This book will be a welcome introduction to the Inuit world.

Jamie Bastedo's work is all about taking science to the streets. Well established as a popular science writer he writes to inform and inspire, telling a "story of place." He also has written over 30 natural history features in magazines, including Up Here, Backpacker, and Winter Living. When not out on the land, he hangs his hat in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.