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The Ice Cave
A Woman’s Adventures from the Mojave to the Antarctic
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Terrace Books
Gripping true adventure stories—from
the Mojave to the Antarctic—reveal one woman’s wild affair
with the earth
For Lucy Jane Bledsoe, wilderness had always been a source of peace. But during one disastrous solo trip in the wintry High Sierra she came face to face with a crisis: the wilderness no longer felt like home. The Ice Cave recounts Bledsoe’s wilderness journeys as she recovers her connection with the wild and discovers the meanings of fear and grace.
These are Bledsoe’s gripping tales of fending off wolves in Alaska, encountering UFOs in the Colorado Desert, and searching for mountain lions in Berkeley. Her memorable story “The Breath of Seals” takes readers to Antarctica, the wildest continent on earth, where she camped out with geologists, biologists, and astrophysicists. These fresh and deeply personal narratives remind us what it means to be simply one member of one species, trying to find food and shelter—and moments of grace—on our planet.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of two novels: This Wild Silence, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and Working Parts, winner of an American Library Association Award for literature. Her collection Sweat: Stories and a Novella was also a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She is the recipient of many other awards and literary fellowships and has worked as a scriptwriter for National Geographic and other educational organizations. She teaches in the Masters of Creative Writing Graduate Program at the University of San Francisco.
Praise
“Adventure lovers are in for a treat. . . . [G]uaranteed to give armchair naturalists and travelers a glorious ride from Alaska to Antarctica. . . . Action, dialog, and musings are perfectly balanced in this hard-to-put-down book; highly recommended for public libraries.”
—Library Journal
“Bledsoe carves a comfortable niche for herself in women’s travel writing . . . [She] has crafted a very engaging and often humorous collection with an impassioned voice and clear dedication to her subject matter.”
—Booklist (from the American Library Association)
“Bledsoe’s accounts of her years of travel and exploration are memorable enough, but the parallel inner journey she narrates endows this collection with a real spiritual strength.”
—Q Syndicate Book Marks
“A longing for spiritual release Bledsoe can find only in the wilderness is woven through these thoughtful essays.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Bledsoe explores fear, exhilaration and will as she bikes mountain tracks seeking mountain lions, encounters wolves in Alaska, wrestles with the lure of summits buried in unexpected snow. . . . Bledsoe combines adventure and physical effort with soul-searching and makes a sympathetic connection with the reader. This is a book for anyone who has wondered what people get out of extreme sport and for those who like a bit of human uncertainty with their armchair adventuring.”
—Portsmouth Herald
“A vivid storyteller, Lucy Jane Bledsoe delivers a compelling and thought-provoking read. Her search for wild places leads her on an inner journey as well, taking her at last to the wildest continent of all. Bledsoe’s account of Antarctica is as mysterious and astonishing as the land itself.”
—Brenda Peterson, author of Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals
“This is what true adventure enthusiasts (armchair and otherwise) want: the truth of the adventure. Bledsoe has assembled tales . . . about bicyclers in the Mojave desert, sailors over the Caribbean sea, mountaineers of the Trinity Alps, and snow trekkers across Antarctica. In all these stories, Bledsoe lets the story move outward across the surfaces of ice, sand, snow, and granite . . . through a wild combination of will and fate, to grace.”
—Brian Bouldrey, author of Monster: Adventures in American Machismo
Additional Resources
Hear an interview with Lucy Bledsoe on the NPR show Only A Game at www.onlyagame.org.
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Larger images
September 2006
LC: 2006007291 G
182 pp. 6 x 9
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