Elisha Kent Kane was a daring explorer. He was the first non-Native to see the massive Humboldt glacier in Greenland. He survived 2 winters in the far north and when he realized that his boat would not be able to make the return trip he organized an escape by sledge and boat to a Danish settlement, travelling 1300 miles to do so. He and all his men were physically devastated by scurvy and many of them were unable to walk. Kane himself suffered from the complications of childhood rheumatic fever all his life but he managed to survive these trying conditions and keep up the spirits of his men. When he died at the young age of 37 in Havana, the train bearing his coffin was greeted by throngs of people all the way home to Philadelphia. There his body lay in state for 3 days while hundreds visited. Yet, his name is hardly known and there is no public monument to him in his birthplace of Philadelphia. Ken McGoogan obtained access to previously unpublished journals and has written a compelling story. Maybe after 150 years Kane is about to get some of the recognition he has missed out on. ( )

The story is about Elisha Kane, an American from Philadelphia, who embarked on an Arctic expedition purportedly to search for the lost British Franklin expedition and find the 'Open Polar Sea'. McGoogan sees Kane as an unsung hero; a point which he pushed to the point of annoyance, interjecting frequent references to Joseph Campbell's 'Hero of a Thousand Faces' and counter arguments to Kane's detractors.

The man was an adventurer who used his family connections to advance himself; he did spend some harrowing months in the Arctic and published a well received book on his observations including a great deal of information on the weather conditions, state of the ice and the lives of the native peoples he encountered; however, he found neither Franklin (after a cursory search) nor the alleged Open Polar Sea (as it doesn't exist). Found him to be a very unsympathetic character typical of his time. ( )

About 75% of this book is about early Arctic exploration done by Elisha Kane and his crew and I found it extremely interesting. The story covers the two years that Kane and his crew are trapped by ice in the deep North and their daily struggle for survival. However, the other 25% of the book is about Elisha Kane's family and love affairs and I had to force my way through these chapters. Even though I loved sections of this book, I was still glad to get to the last chapter, especially since the last 60 pages of the book were about his domestic affairs and his death and they were very anti-climatic compared to his arctic voyage. ( )