In Irish novelist Cormac James’s “vivid, hypnotic, and acutely piercing” (Colum McCann) North American debut, a ship’s lieutenant discovers a stowaway, pregnant with his child, while battling crushing Arctic ice

“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

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