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.
SHE’S ROUGH… After being terrorized by an evil tyrant, Hilda Berdottir, a no-nonsense Viking woman, established a Dark Age sanctuary for abused women.. And they are not only surviving, but have been thriving for five years now. Everything is perfect, except that the women have begun to yearn for the one thing that is a danger to their lives. Men! Oh, not for their companionship, but for their seed…as in children. They want to bed them, then shed them, not wed them. Holy Thor! Good thing there are no men around. Until… HE’S READY… Torolf Magnusson and his team of Navy SEALs are cruising along a Norwegian fjord like bleepin’ tourists when their reproduction Viking longship wrecks, and they somehow find themselves back in the tenth century outside a medieval version of a woman’s shelter. And the females women there are trying everything in their erotic repertoire to lure the men into their bed furs. Hoo-yah! Except for Hilda who wants nothing to do with Torolf. Until… TOGETHER, THEY’RE A MATCH… After Torolf and his comrades-in-arms rid the old Norse world of the villainous Steinolf, they return to present-day California. But oops! Somehow, Torolf accidentally brings Hilda along for the ride through time and space. What’s a guy to do when suddenly responsible for a reluctant girlfriend who is being stalked by a mad scientist bent on dissecting her thousand-year-old body? Especially when said body is so hot it’s making him think they were meant to be together, ready or not. Booklist Top Ten Romance Novel for 2006!! Winner of the Hughie Award for Best Time Travel Finalist for the PRISM Award in the Time Travel Category Finalist for the P.E.A.R.L. Award