Tuesday Night Book Club: Ice Bound

It was splashed across every newspaper in 1999: a woman doctor in Antarctica finds a lump in her breast and after performing her own biopsy realizes that she has a particularly aggressive form of cancer. But no planes can land during the long winter months, and she must administer her own chemotherapy. That woman was Nielsen, and this is her story of her battle with cancer and the extreme conditions of the South Pole. Alone and scared, Nielsen describes the feelings that washed over her that long winter. Part adventure story, part journal of self-discovery, her book is written in an easy-flowing narrative voice. She regales us with tales of parties like the one celebrating her 47th birthday and then horrifies us as she recounts how she e-mailed her family when she found the lump. No matter what the passage, Nielsen mesmerizes readers as she carries them along for a ride of a lifetime.