Freya has come to Antarctica ostensibly to undertake a photographic expedition to pay tribute to Frank Hurley's iconic images - but also to escape a stifling relationship. Once she is there, though, living in the cramped and close confines of Davis Station, the extraordinary world of Antarctica gets under her skin and she starts to unfurl, finding her world change in ways she would never previously have thought possible.
Weaving a vivid re-creation of Douglas Mawson's ill-fated 1911-14 Antarctic expedition into the contemporary story of a woman coming to terms with the breakdown of her marriage, The Nature of Ice is a poetic, multi-stranded novel of present and past, hope and tragedy, love and loss. It is both a love story of place, bringing to vivid life the haunting landscape of Antarctica, the frozen continent that intrigues us all. (Publisher's blurb)