Icefields by Thomas Wharton

Icefields by Thomas Wharton

• The Banff Grand National Prize for Literature
• The Writers Guild of Alberta Best First Book Award
• The Commonwealth Best First Novel Prize (Caribbean and Canada Region)
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  At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Acturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse . . .
  Nearly sixty feet below the surface, Byrne is wedged upside down between the narrowing walls of a chasm, fighting his desire to sleep. The ice in front of him is lit with a pale blue-green radiance. There, embedded in he pure, antediluvian glacier, Byrne sees something that will inextricably link him to the vast bed of ice, and the people who inhabit this strange corner of the world. In this moment, his life becomes a quest to uncover the mystery of the icefield that almost became his tomb.
  Within the deceptively simple framework of a tourist guidebook, Icefields takes a breathtaking, imaginative look at the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths. Here is an impressive literary landscape, and an expedition unlike any you have ever experienced.

Thomas Wharton was born in Grande Prairie, Alberta, a northern Canada oil and gas boomtown. He spent much of his youth moving from town to town, and settled for a few years in Jasper, Alberta. The small town so influenced Wharton that he set his debut novel, Icefields, there.

After a variety of jobs -- including hiking guide, bookstore clerk, lab technician, and technical illustrator -- he set his sights on writing. Receiving his M.A. in English from the University of Alberta in 1993, Wharton turned his thesis into his first novel, Icefields. NeWest Press published his debut in 1995 in his native Canada, where it received critical acclaim, and hit local bestseller lists. Washington Square Press, a division of Pocket Books, published the U.S. edition of Icefields on September 9, 1996.

Wharton is currently working on his Ph.D. in English at University of Calgary. He lives with his wife and two small children.

(Click here to read an interview with the author.)