The North has always fascinated us. It

has attracted a strange motley of people

to explore it and exploit it. None stranger

than John Hornby, on whose life Snow-

manis based. His Arctic passion was so

intense that it is said he once ran 100

miles overland to join his first expedition

to the pole.

In this novel Hornby meets up with

two modern-day American exiles, Bard

and Claus, who have come Northto es-

cape and to search Together they make

an epic journey, back in time and eon-

seiuusness, into the heart of the Arctic

barrengrounds. There, as Claus wryly

notes in his diary, "the center is every-

where, it s the circumference that s

lacking."

Hornby is an unlikely candidate for

legend. Small and seemingly frail, he

possesses endless energy and a superhu-

man capacity for endurance. Puckish,

plucky, and often comic, he manages to

make a game of starving.

Indians, particularly Indian women,

also play an important part in the story.

So do civil servants, priests and police-

men; their behavior seldom speaks well

of the white man s presence in the

North.

Snowman tells a moving story of sur-

vival and death in the Canadian Arctic.

It is also an eloquent, and often lyrically

evocative, portrait of the land and the

people it dominates.