Langley-Adams Library (Groveland)

Compass /

eng

no index present

fiction

Compass /

We can't all be heroes. Some try and succeed. Others posture and pretend. And a few--just a few--set off on their hero's quest only to discover that failure was within them all along. Compass recounts the adventures of a man who has made a career traveling the world shilling stories about historic expeditions and explorers for a major geographic magazine. Called out on his dishonesty, he sets out on an adventure of his own--an ill-advised and poorly planned trip to the Arctic floe edge under the disorienting twenty-four-hour summer sun. When the ice breaks and his guide disappears, the narrator ends up alone and adrift in the hostile northern sea. He draws on his knowledge of historic expeditions to craft his own, inept, attempt at survival. As time passes and he becomes increasingly irrational, his obsession with Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea, becomes terrifyingly real