{"id":4230,"date":"2021-11-03T04:59:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T11:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4230"},"modified":"2021-11-03T04:59:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T11:59:43","slug":"alice-henderson-a-blizzard-of-polar-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/alice-henderson-a-blizzard-of-polar-bears\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Henderson: A Blizzard of Polar Bears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>These books \u2013 two so far \u2013 are a mix of adventure, climate change despair, and appreciation and love of the natural world and the creatures that share the planet with us.\u00a0 In the first book, Henderson\u2019s protagonist, Dr. Alex Carter, left Boston to study wolverines in Montana.\u00a0 As that study winds down in book two, she\u2019s delighted to get a call from a colleague, asking her to fill in for her on a polar bear study in Churchill, Manitoba.<\/p>\n

Thrilled, Alex jumps at the chance and hops on a plane.\u00a0 She\u2019s used to solitude and her main points of contact are a buddy who is an actor and her father.\u00a0 While Churchill would be no one\u2019s idea of the big city, to Alex, it almost is, as she\u2019ll be working at a large center with other scientists.\u00a0 She\u2019s happy enough to be able to stay in a motel on her own instead of the center\u2019s quarters.<\/p>\n

Much of her work is done out in the wild, however, and where Henderson truly excels are bravura scenes where Alex is out doing her job.\u00a0 The job involves taking a helicopter out to the ice with a grad student assistant, and with the help of the pilot, spotting polar bears, which the scientists then sedate and then proceed to collect hair, blood and other samples to help them determine how the bears are faring.<\/p>\n

Not well, it turns out, and the heartbreak of this book is reading about the diminishing arctic ice that restricts the bears hunting of seals.\u00a0 When they can\u2019t get out on the ice, they can\u2019t capture and kill the seals that keep them alive and healthy.\u00a0 Many of the bears are malnourished, though some Alex and her team find have cubs and seem OK.<\/p>\n

Into this mix, Henderson of course must introduce some conflict, and of course there is someone out there who isn\u2019t appreciating the results of her study.\u00a0 At first the sabotage is small, and then is becomes massive.\u00a0 There\u2019s a bravura set piece where the helicopter crashes and the three \u2013 Alex, the grad student, and the pilot \u2013 are fighting for their lives out on the ice.<\/p>\n

To me, the action scenes paled in comparison to the recounting of simple survival on the arctic ice, the beauty of the north \u2013 there\u2019s a lovely scene featuring the aurora borealis \u2013 and the encounters with bears, whether out on the ice or back in Churchill itself.<\/p>\n

The action sequences that wrap up the story were, to me, less successful, though they were perfectly adequate.\u00a0 I think when Henderson, a new mystery writer but an actual scientist, marries her storytelling skills to her powerful nature writing, she\u2019ll be tough to beat.\u00a0 As it is, Alex Carter is an excellent protagonist, one who holds my interest and makes me eager for the next book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These books \u2013 two so far \u2013 are a mix of adventure, climate change despair, and appreciation and love of the natural world and the creatures that share the planet with us.\u00a0 In the first book, Henderson\u2019s protagonist, Dr. Alex Carter, left Boston to study wolverines in Montana.\u00a0 As that study winds down in book … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[702,440,700,704,701,703,291],"class_list":["post-4230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-blizzard-of-polar-bears","tag-alice-henderson","tag-churchill","tag-climate-change","tag-manitoba","tag-polar-bears","tag-william-morrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4232,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions\/4232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}