Book review: "Frozen in Time" by Mitchell Zuckoff

At the outset of World War II, the United States rushed to send airplanes to England to help in the fight. With long-distance flying still limited, the planes hopscotched from New England to Newfoundland to Greenland to Iceland  before finally touching down in Britain. But not all of them made it.

Greenland's fierce winds and blinding snowstorms were a particular obstacle. In "Frozen in Time," author Mitchell Zuckoff tells an amazing story from 1942-43 when one military plane went down, followed by the crashes of two rescue planes (there was even a related fourth crash, but Zuckoff doesn't spend much time on it.)

The series of events leaves two planes of dead men on the ice of Greenland, while a shattered third plane barely shelters nine survivors from the freezing temperatures.

Those survivors, and the efforts to rescue them, are the primary focus of a story that takes an amazing number of twists and turns. Just when you thought nothing more could go wrong, it does. Severe cold, tremendous winds, hunger, and the perils of deep crevasses in the ice are just some of the perils that both the survivors and rescuers must overcome.

Zuckoff weaves the rescue together with a modern-day story of attempts to find the remnants of one of the crashed planes and return the remains of the perished men to the United States. At first I wasn't sure this would work, but Zuckoff does a deft job of blending the stories together.

Zuckoff has conducted thorough research and the details he found bring the story alive. My one concern in the storytelling is that while he captures the hardiness and resilience of the men, I wonder if he glosses over moments of conflict. The only hint of disagreement among the survivors he offers is when one ignores his companions and goes off to sleep away from them. Surely, during their long ordeal, the men must have had an occasional squabble?

This is a book with a lot of characters and I liked the way Zuckoff introduces the stories of the plane crash survivors and rescuers one at a time as they enter the narrative. That gives you a chance to get to know one character before moving on to the next.

But oddly, when Zuckoff describes the modern-day story, he fails to follow the model he used for the World War II story. He tries to describes all the modern characters up front, and it's hard to keep them straight.

I liked that the book puts the pictures at the appropriate places in the book. This is much more useful to the reader than cramming them all into the middle of the book.

With so many characters, Zuckoff helpfully includes thumbnail biographies of each at the back of the book. Unfortunately, he doesn't tip off the reader that the bios are there and I didn't find them until I was done with the book. Now, at least you know they're there. You might find them useful for reference

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