Book Description

It's 1857, and teenager Peter Griffin joins a sea mission to solve a world-famous mystery: what really happened to arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. Franklin and his crew of 128 men had sailed from England twelve years earlier in search of the Northwest Passage, a sea route through the Arctic between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Mysteriously, the entire Franklin expedition disappeared without a trace. Based on true events and real people, Peter's fictional first-person account brings this Arctic adventure to new life. His journal details the long, dark days cooped up on board the ship, the ever-present dangers lurking in the forbidding, icy landscape, and the sadness that he and his shipmates experience as they come closer to realizing the ultimate end of Franklin and his men. In his introduction, Ken McGoogan provides readers with background on the dramatic 2014 discovery of the wreck of Franklin's HMS Erebus and connects these events to the story of the 1857 expedition. [Fry reading level - 2.7]