Frozen In Time

I know I routinely tout that there isn't anything I won't read (except that time I refused to read The Girl Who Played with Fire). I'm still disappointed I misplaced The Book of Mormon an Arizona Senator gave me when I was in my early 20's, and I've tried reading the Bible a few times but have never gotten further than the apple. When they find one that reads like a novel, let me know. But it's not like I refuse to read historical non-fiction, it's just that I've never considered it before. Like the Fantasy genre, it has never entered my book-verse. But I read and enjoyed Game of Thrones so I can read Frozen In Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of WWII and enjoy that, too. And I did.

If I were to pick up a historical non-fiction of my own volition, a story about any war would not be it. While incredibly interesting, when it starts to get down to details like airplane types, bomb types, rankings, etc. my brain goes numb. So this book was introduced to me by my friend who agreed to read The Gringo with me if I read this with her, and I have to say, she made a much better choice.

A professor at Boston University, Mitchell Zuckoff embarks on a highly improbable mission to recover downed airplanes in the expanse of Greenland, lead by a man whose sole purpose in life is to recover people and items from the war and return them to US soil. Missions of this exact nature were tried and failed in the past, making government intervention highly unlikely and unstable at best. Without losing hope and with time rapidly closing in before nasty-ER weather smothered Greenland, the crew and Zuckoff, documenting the expedition, reached Greenland with no other option than to find the Duck, a WWII amphibious airplane that disappeared while trying to rescue another crash.

Zuckoff expertly weaves together two enthralling tales: one of the courageous, heroic, and amazing men struggling to survive in half an airplane during a rough Arctic winter (like there's any other kind); the other a modern-day adventure of mystery, intrigue, danger, drama, and suspense as they try to solve the mystery of exactly what happened all those years ago. Although the beginning takes a bit of effort to trudge through thanks to those darn things called "facts" and "information," and given this wouldn't have been my first book choice....ever.... I was surprised to find myself unable to put it down in under 100 pages (if it takes over 100 pages I start to wonder why I'm wasting my time with your book). I even hauled it in my tote across the country to - how ironic is this? - Boston (if I had read the book jacket more closely, I probably would have stalked him while I was in the area).

Written clearly, concisely, and with only a hint of personal feelings about what was happening at any given moment, Zuckoff takes something that could have ended up extremely dry and turned it into something so thrilling that the moment I finished the book, I tweeted him begging to tell me a follow-up was in the works (as far as I know, no; but he did send me the link to his blog).

Finishing this in a weekend would be a little ambitious, there is a lot of information and a lot of things that promote putting it down every few minutes and staring off into space to contemplate. Thanks to this pick, I've added his previous best-seller, Lost in Shangri-La: Escape from a Hidden World - A True Story, which received high-praise from people I take book advice from: my friend and my Uncle.

I'm sure most war-based, historical non-fiction books are interesting but since this is my one and only experience, I'm going to go ahead and recommend you read this one. It's one of the few I've "taken for the team," and read on hard-cover, and I'm glad I did.