‘Capricious, the nature of ice; as impetuous as faithless deeds. So easy to forget that sea ice is only a veneer, inherently flawed, skin-deep as desire, so transitory as to be scattered out to sea, displaced by ocean, dispersed by wind - gone in the lapse of a day.’

Freya has come to Antarctica ostensibly to undertake a photographic expedition to retrace Frank Hurley’s iconic photographs - but also to escape a stifling relationship. Once she is there, though, living in the cramped and close confines of Davis Station, the extraordinary world of Antarctica gets under her skin and she starts to unfurl, finding her world change in ways she would never previously had thought possible.

Weaving in a vivid recreation of Douglas Mawson’s ill-fated 191-14 Antarctic expedition into the contemporary story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage, The Nature of Ice is a poetic, multi-stranded novel of present and past, hope and tragedy, love and loss. It is a both a love story and a heart-stopping, intensely moving polar adventure story - most of all though it is a story of place, bringing to vivid life the extraordinary landscape of Antarctica, the frozen continent that intrigues us all.