Frozen in Time

"Greenland makes no sense.

First there's the name, which as most schoolchildren know should be Iceland, but that was already taken. Almost nothing green grows in Greenland, where more than eighty percent of the land is buried under deep ice. Deep, as in, up to ten thousand feet, or two solid miles. If all of Greenland's ice melted - a worst-case scenario of climate change - the world's oceans would rise by twenty feet or more.

Greenland's strangeness is compounded by it's great politically inconsequential size; its almost complete emptiness and it unconscionable weather. More than sixteen hundred miles from north to south, and eight hundred miles at its widest point, Greenland could swallow Texas and California and still have room for a dessert of New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, and all of New England. It's three times the size of France, and it occupies more than twice the area of the planet's second largest island, New Guinea.

Even more than its size, Greenland's most defining feature is its climate. Temperatures vary along a spectrum of discomfort, ranging from bone-rattling to instant frostbite. In many places, temperatures regularly reach the only place on the thermometer where Celsius and Fahrenheit agree: 40 degrees below zero. For much of the year the north of Greenland is ringed by solid pack ice, and the waters to the south are beset by the storis, a twenty-mile belt of floating icebergs. In the fall and winter, devastating blizzards known as piteraq storms race more than a hundred miles across the broken landscape. The wind blows glacial dust that can scour glass or blind eyes left unprotected."

This is the setting for a rescue mission of epic portions that will span over 70 years and is still ongoing. In the book Frozen in Time by author Mitchell Zuckoff, he chronicles the first plane crash in November of 1942 of a C-53 cargo plan that slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 assigned to the search and rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously all nine men on the B-17 survived. With the weather worsening, the U.S. Military launched a daring rescue mission, sending a Grumman Duck amphibious plane to find the men. After picking up one member of the B-17 crew, the Duck flew into a severe storm, and the plane and the three men aboard vanished.

The author was part of the current research and exposition in 2012 to travel to Greenland in search of the missing planes and to recover the bodies of these military heroes and attempt to bring their bodies back. He takes the reader back to 1942 to tell exactly what happened based on digging through newspaper archives for hidden treasures, collecting declassified documents, maps, photographs, interviews, and previously unknown journals seeking information to put this book together as well as capturing the ongoing search for the remains of these planes and the men aboard. It is written as a narrative, but this is a work of nonfiction. Because the story moves between past and present, date markers such as "November 1942" and
"October 2011" signal which tale is being told.

I received Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff compliments of Harper Collins Publishers and TLC Book Tours for my honest review. I could not put this one down. I was captivated by the past and present day stories that I didn't even know existed. It was one thing to know about Greenland but to know so many died while attempting rescue missions in spite surviving the initial crash. The brutality of the island itself is not to underestimated and even with the modern technology we have today, the search is still ongoing. The island of Greenland it seems does not want to give up its captives. Through this book are countless black and white photographs detailing both the past and present day histories. If you love true survival stories against all the odds, then you will definitely want to pick this one up. Hands down one of the best books I've read this year and hope this one gets pick up by the motion picture industry or reality television. It's time to find our boys and bring them back home. This one rates a perfect 5 out of 5 stars!

For more information about Frozen in Time, Mitchell Zuckoff, or where to pick up a copy of this book today, please click on the links below:

Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff

You can follow the expedition on Facebook to stay up to date with all the latest information by clicking here.  There is a ton of great information from this site including pictures and articles from the local news about the ongoing expedition.

You can also visit the author's website to learn more about Frozen in Time and his other books by clicking here. 

For more review on Frozen in Time from the TLC Book Tour, please click here. 

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper (April 23, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062133438
• ISBN-13: 978-0062133434
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches