In 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slips on the ice of the Arcturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slides into a crevasse, wedged upside down nearly sixty feet below the surface. As he fights losing consciousness, a stray beam of sunlight illuminates the ice in front of him and Byrne sees something in the blue-green radiance that will forever link him to the ancient glacier. In this moment, his life's purpose becomes uncovering the mystery of the icefield that almost was his tomb. Along the way, he encounters similarly fixated individuals, each immersed in their own quest: the healer and storyteller Sara; the bohemian travel writer Freya Becker; the entrepreneur Trask; the poet Hal Rowan; and Elspeth, greenhouse keeper and Byrne's lover.

First published in 1995, Wharton's Icefields is an astonishing historical novel set in a mesmerizing literary landscape, one that is constantly being altered by the surging and retreating glacier and unpredictable weather. Here-where characters are pulled into deep chasms of ice as well as the stories and histories they tell one another-is a vivid, daring, and crisply written book that reveals the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths.

This updated Landmark Edition includes an author interview with Smaro Kamboureli and an Afterword by award-winning writer Suzette Mayr.

Thomas Wharton was born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, an agriculture and oil city located near the BC border. His father, a utilities manager, was transferred to Jasper when Wharton was a teen. The years Wharton spent exploring the mountains and glaciers around Jasper have had a lasting impact on his literary output; references to the Rocky Mountains weave in and out of the books he has written, most notably Icefields (NeWest Press, 1995) and The Logogryph. A life-long love of maps, history, art, and poetry equally informs his work. His latest adult novel is Every Blade of Grass. He is also the author of a fantasy trilogy, The Perilous Realm for younger readers. The Shadow of Malabron, The Fathomless Fire, and The Tree Story are available from Doubleda Canada.

Thomas Wharton's profile page

• Winner, Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize
• Winner, Writers Guild of Alberta's Best First Book Award

Praise for Icefields:
"...careful dialogue, a steady pace and cool, subtle prose.... through a skillful juxtaposition of scientific observations, dialogue and journal entries and letters, fact is successfully merged with fantasy.... a well-told tale is definitely worth the pursuit, as both the doctor and Mr. Wharton's readers will discover."
~ Pamela Stock, New York Times Book Review
"Icefields is a novel of crystalline beauty from a writer to watch."
~ Ronald Wright, Times Literary Supplement
"Ice, when it is touched, can sear the flesh: in Icefields it fires the imagination."
~ Emily Mitchell, People
"Wharton has ably captured the turn-of-the-century feel of rural Canada, complete with boosterism, a Victorian adventuress, and teahouses in the wilderness."
~ Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Wharton is an original writer and Icefields is an original novel."
~ Mark Giles, Calgary Herald
"Ironic, brilliant, and unforgettable."
~ Peter Simpson, Telegraph-Journal
"[Wharton] is stalking what, for a young writer, is rarefied game indeed: the playful ways in which people's private mythologies just barely intersect, if at all."
~ Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times
"Wharton reminds us again that, though we should attempt to look at nature on its own terms, we must do it in a human, loving way."
~ Alexander Rettie, Alberta Views
".an astonishing first novel, for it's scope, structural integrity, consistent beauty, and language."
~ Jill Robinson, Edmonton Journal