Capturing Antarctica’s Beauty and Resilience

My favorite books of 2018, both fiction and nonfiction, weren’t published this year, though they share a theme: Antarctica.
There are two types of travelers to the most remote region of the world, says the protagonist of Midge Raymond’s 2016 novel “My Last Continent”: “those who have run out of places to go, and those who have run out of places to hide.” I’m one of the former. After traveling to more than 70 countries over the years, I took an 11-day cruise to Antarctica in January with my soon-to-be husband. During the trip, I read several books that powerfully convey the southernmost continent’s lessons and allure.

The common thread is that these works are ultimately tales of resilience. In her 2008 “Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole,” Jerri Nielsen, a physician, explained how her recovery from a harrowing divorce sent her to Antarctica, where she diagnosed herself with breast cancer and began treatment. The protagonist in “South Pole Station,” the 2017 novel by Ashley Shelby, goes south after her twin brother’s suicide, and takes on a conspiracy by climate-change deniers. In “My Last Continent,” Raymond’s main character finds the courage to go on after a devastating loss. In Maria Semple’s 2012 satirical novel “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” – which was made into a movie that will be released in March – the protagonist flees to Antarctica to cope with the loss of her identity as a renowned architect. Aplsley Cherry-Garrard’s 1922 “The Worst Journey in the World” is the account of the remarkable perseverance of the British explorer Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his team on the fatal 1910-1913 British Antarctica Expedition.