Minds of Winter by Ed O’Loughlin. Published by Quercus

This is a book to savor, not rush through, and if you do rush, you may not understand what’s actually happening. Traversing time and space, this is a novel about both Franklin’s doomed 1845 Polar expedition and two modern-day people in Alberta, Canada in search of things that have been lost to them. Told in a series of what could almost be short stories, readers will join the explorers on their ill-fated trip, as well as other Arctic expeditions in the years following and also get to know modern-day Nelson and Fay, who get caught up together through an accident of fate, only to learn that they have a connection they could have never imagined. We also read about a carriage clock that is actually made of two rare Greenwich chronometers from the Franklin expedition. Chronometers that were supposedly never recovered, but now have turned up in the present day. I liked the back and forth between characters and time periods, but it does take concentration from the reader to be able to comprehend. A mesmerizing look at what was and what might have been. Highly recommended