Latitudes of Melt ~ by Joan Clark

1. Title, author, and date of book?
Latitudes of Melt, by Joan Clark, 2000 in Canada, 2002 in the United States

2. Genre: fiction

3. What made you want to read it? Did it live up to your expectations?
I was looking for books that take me to new places in the world. Not knowing anything about the book, I was pleasantly surprised at how it kept my interest and attention.

4. Summarize the book without giving away the ending.
In the year 1912, a fisherman named Francis St. Croix discovers a baby girl adrift on an ice floe in the North Atlantic. He names her Aurora because of her dawn rescue at sea, and she becomes part of the his family on the austere Newfoundland coast. Aurora grows up, marries a lighthouse keeper, and has two children: Nancy, a headstrong woman who wants to be everything her mother isn't, and Stanley, a late bloomer who has his mother's passion for exploration and becomes an expert on ice. Nancy's daughter, Sheila, sets out to unravel her grandmother Aurora's mysterious past and why she was on the ice in 1912 ... shortly after the sinking of the Titanic.

5. What did you think of the main character?
Aurora is quirky, but also very plucky and independent. I like her.

6. Which character could you relate to best, and why?
Probably Aurora herself.

7. Were there any other especially interesting characters?
Tom Mulloy, the lighthouse keeper, seemed to be interesting at first, but I still like Aurora best.

8. Did you think the characters and their problems were believable?
Yes, especially as some of the characters faced old age.

9. Was location important to the story?
Yes, Newfoundland was like another character in the story, and the reader watches it change through the years. The fishing industry changed profoundly from 1912 when the fishermen out in a rowboat got lost from their mother ship to the time of Stanley's deep-sea diving career.

10. What did you like most about the book?
I enjoyed learning about the way people lived nearly a hundred years ago.

11. Share a quote from the book.

Of the ten thousand icebergs calved in Greenland each year, about one-tenth crossed the latitude of 48 degrees north; half that number made it to the latitude of 46 degrees; few of those would make it past the tail end of the Banks at the latitude of 43 degrees. Because Newfoundland was roughly between 46 and 51 degrees north, it was smack in the middle of the latitudes of melt. Every year, icebergs drifted down the Labrador Current to ground in the island's coves and bays (p. 166).

12. What do you think will be your lasting impression of this book?
Joan Clark writes beautifully, and I think I'll be remembering writing like this, when a character who was injured and sedated was thinking:

I am on the sea. Am I following Stanley? How strange that I should be floating on the water, when as far back as I can remember I've been afraid of the sea. I'm not afraid now, perhaps because I'm imagining myself as a little boat toddling down the bay. I'm no bigger than a skiff, but I'm perfectly seaworthy and know how to mould myself to the water as the swells lift me up and down. I take my time, drifting into coves and tickles, inlets and bights, on my leisurely journey through the latitudes of melt, idling past capes and points and beaches in no hurry to reach the place of trespass, the bay of souls.

13. How would you rate this book?
Rated: 9/10, excellent!

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ADDENDUM: While I was reading Latitudes of Melt, Booklogged and her husband Candleman were actually IN Newfoundland and took a photo of an iceberg floating off-shore at a village near Gander.


Click on the photo to enlarge it. I'm reading the journal of their travels and have gone from Utah to Newfoundland, Canada, with them so far. This is so much fun, traveling in books and discovering another book blogger is seeing IN PERSON what I'm seeing in my book! Read what they wrote and photographed that day by clicking this:
http://thefolksarenthome.blogspot.com/2007/07/july-19-gander.html

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UPDATE: To read my more recent comments about this, click here.