A New York TimesBook Review Editors’ Choice

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year

Hudson Booksellers Book of the Year

One of the New York Post’s Best Books of the Summer

One of The Millions’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year

IndieNext Pick

A Time Magazine “What to Read Now” Selection


A wry novel set at the edge of the earth about the courage it takes to band together, even as everything around you falls apart

Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, Cooper Gosling is adrift at thirty and on the verge of ruining her career. So when the opportunity arises to join the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers Program in Antarctica, she jumps at the chance—and finds herself in the company of others who are just abnormal enough for Polar life, a group of eccentrics motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. When they are joined by a fringe scientist who claims climate change is a hoax, the Polies’ already-imbalanced community is rattled, bringing them to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.