Oprah.com Fresh Pick for Your Fall Book-Club Meeting

Gratifyingly defies expectations.
New York Times Book Review

[A] harrowing Arctic adventure.
Oprah.com

An extraordinary novel, combining a powerful narrative with a considered and poetic use of language… . Reading the book, I recalled the dramatic natural landscape of Jack London and the wild untamed seas of William Golding.
JOHN BOYNE, author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and A History of Loneliness

The great topic of Cormac James’ The Surfacing is the reach of human possibility. The prose is calm, vivid, hypnotic, and acutely piercing. James is attuned to the psychological moment: this is a book about fatherhood and all its attendant terrors. It’s a remarkable achievement.
COLUM McCANN, author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic

Far from civilization, on the hunt for Sir John Franklin’s recently lost Northwest Passage expedition, Lieutenant Morgan and his crew find themselves trapped in ever-hardening Arctic ice that threatens to break apart their ship. When Morgan realizes that a stowaway will give birth to his child in the frozen wilderness, he finds new clarity and courage to lead his men across a bleak expanse as shifting, stubborn, and treacherous as human nature itself.

A tale of psychological fortitude against impossible odds, The Surfacing is also a beautifully told story of one man’s transformative journey toward fatherhood.

Cormac James was born in Cork, Ireland, and lives in Montpellier, France, with his wife and son. The Surfacing is his North American debut novel.