Unravelling the Franklin Mystery

Woodman maintains that fewer than ten bodies were found at Starvation Cove and that the last survivors left the cove in 1851, three years after the standard account assumes them to be dead. Woodman also disputes the conclusion of Owen Beattie and John Geiger's book Frozen in Time that lead-poisoning was a major contributing cause of the disaster. Much of the Inuit testimony presented in Unravelling the Franklin Mystery has never before been published. The earliest Woodman quotes was recorded by Franklin searchers only nine years after the disappearance of the Franklin team. Inuit testimony provided Woodman with the pivotal clue in his re-construction of the puzzle of the Franklin disaster: I proceeded from the assumption that all Inuit stories concerning white men should have a discoverable factual basis ... [and] managed to discover a scenario which allowed use of all of the native recollections, solved some troubling discrepancies in the physical evidence, and led to some significant new conclusions as to the fate of the beleaguered sailors. Whether or not one agrees with Woodman's conclusions, his account is compelling and his analysis impressive.

"Undoubtedly the most authoritative, cool-headed and thrilling investigation so far." Jonathan Keates, London Observer. "Woodman has examined all the documentation on Inuit testimony with relentless thoroughness. He has made a vitally important, long overdue contribution ... It is a book anyone obsessed with Franklin will want to have." M.T. Kelly, Toronto Star. "Compelling reading ... On a warm week at an Ontario lakefront cottage, I sat inside turning unwieldy page proofs ... and could not stop." Christopher Moore, Books in Canada. "Woodman is ... an indefatigable and creative researcher, and gifted in the ability to convey dauntless enthusiasm for the obscure hieroglyphs that Franklin's history left us in its wake." John Moss, Arctic Circle. "Woodman's book will be invaluable ... to those who can't get enough on the Franklin mystery." Ian Mayer, Montreal Gazette. "Brilliant ... a joy to read ... It unfolds slowly like a good detective story ... The time is ripe for a fresh, new, original book about John Franklin. This is it." C. Stuart Houston, Department of Medical Imaging, University of Saskatchewan. "Woodman has done an excellent job of gathering Inuit testimony and presents a new emphasis which allows new interpre-tations and conclusions with regard to the Franklin epic." Dorothy Harley Eber, author of When the Whalers Were Up North.