Welcome to the goddamn ice cube : chasing fear and finding home in the great white north /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north.

By the time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a "tough girl"--a young woman who confronts danger without apology--she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her.

By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman's adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn't cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her--and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own.

Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence--navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors--as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man's land.

Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman's journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The most dangerous predators in the wild aren't the animals, warns Braverman (contributor, Best Women's Travel Writing). A self-described "tough girl," the author reveals how she delayed college to enroll in a traditional Norwegian folk school, where she learned dog sledding and wilderness techniques, along with 40 other teenagers. Obsessed with the North since childhood, Braverman worked as a tour guide in Alaska, where the male-dominated camp culture forced her into frightening sexual situations. She also spent time in Mortenhals, a small Norwegian village, helping an aging shopkeeper set up a local museum. Viewed with skepticism and amusement by the townsfolk, she eventually won their acceptance. The physical perils she faced-Would she be attacked by a polar bear? Lose control of the dogs? Get lost on the glacier?-were nowhere near as terrifying as the psychological challenges. An unforgettable journey through the heart and mind of an incredibly courageous woman. Verdict A real-life thriller combined with a remarkable coming-of-age tale, Braverman's memoir breathes life into the brutally harsh landscapes and her search for identity. An appealing read for fans of Jon Krakauer or Cheryl Strayed.-Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Braverman's search for personal fulfillment in some of the most unforgiving places on Earth, often behind a team of sled dogs, makes for a compelling if at times scattered debut memoir. Raised in California with childhood dreams of being a polar explorer, Braverman first visited Norway at age 10, cementing her desire to spend long periods in Scandinavia. A yearlong exchange program during her junior year in high school sends her not to the icy-and rural-north but to Norway's more cosmopolitan south, to stay with a host family in Lillehammer. After high school, she returns to Norway to study dog-sledding, immersing herself in dog care and learning how to survive the endless night. This experience leads to a summer in an Alaskan dog tour company, Dog World. It's still Norway that draws her in, and she finds herself most content working in the small northern village of Mortenhals, where she helps aging shopkeeper Arild with his general store and cobbled-together museum. Braverman often cuts too abruptly between her strands of memory, so it's difficult to give each piece equal weight, but her easy, lyrical prose makes this search for identity and self a worthwhile read. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Braverman grew up in California, until her father took a sabbatical when she was 10, and she discovered a geography she could not forget. She returned there in high school and, before and after two stints running tourists on dog sleds in Alaska, explored the remote reaches of northern Norway. This is not the place of minimalist furniture and the Nobel Peace Prize, she asserts, but rather the Norway of witchcraft, storytelling and incest. In languorous prose, she describes the people who cannot leave these northern places and delves into memories of uncomfortable sexual situations with Norwegians and, at the hands of her Alaskan boyfriend, the bewilderment of acquiescing to repeated date rape. Is this a memoir of the north or of being a woman who had both good and bad experiences in Arctic places? Readers will likely find that ice cubes are not the point, but rather the risky choices made while growing up and the struggles faced along the way.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2016 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A memoir of arctic adventure that goes deeper into self-discovery and finding a home."I've spent more than half my life pointed northward, trying to answer private questions about violence and belonging and cold," writes Braverman, a dog sledder and journalist whose frequent, extended visits to Norway and Alaska began from personal circumstances but soon assumed the significance of a quest to find a place where she belonged. Her journey from innocence to experience followed the map from south to north: "While southern Norwegians took pride in their restraintnortherners were loose and vulgar. They cursed, slurred their words, joked often about sex and death, and gauged time loosely." As a teenage foreign exchange student in Norway who later led dog sled teams for tourists in Alaska, Braverman was frequently tested by the male-dominated culture, wondering when jokes crossed the line into something more, whether she was experiencing harassment or it was just in her head. Though the narrative jumps back and forth, chronologically and geographically, the voice throughout remains as insightful and engaging as it is uncertain, from a young woman who is never quite certain if she is safe, not only from the climate, but from so-called civilization, and where danger might lie. "The thing was, nothing that had happened to mewas beyond the normal scope of what happened to women all the time. Some harassment by an authority figure, a few sexual remarks, pressure from an insistent boyfriend?" Yet her experience allowed her to recognize what had been wrong all along, as she found pleasure in sex where she didn't feel that pressure and fell in love of her own volition. Her external experiences are extraordinary in the frigid north that so few have experienced, but it's what happens internally that both sets this memoir apart and gives it universal resonance. Indelible characters, adventurous spirit, and acute psychological insight combine in this multilayered debut. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.