“Frozen in Time” by Mitchell Zuckoff – A Cold Tale of Survival

The date is November 5th, 1942, and the U.S. Army has lost one of its cargo planes as it has apparently crashed in an ice cap, located in one of the most hostile places on Earth, the ironically-named Greenland. In an attempt to rescue the crew and salvage the plane, a B-17 bomber was sent… and it crashed too, though thankfully the entire crew survived.

As the U.S. launched a rescue a operation, one of the nine men got picked up and seemingly rescued by an amphibious plane… until it too, crashed and disappeared into a severe storm.

Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff basically tells the story of those crashes, and mainly, how the B-17 bomber crew managed to stay alive in such hostile conditions, slowly plodding their way towards hope and salvation, surrounded by nothing but the unforgiving arctic wilderness.

First off, by all accounts, these crashes detailed here did happen in real life during World War II, and just like in the book, at least certain members of the crew survived. What we have here is a novelized version of the truth, so we can expect a bit of distortion and sensationalism here and there because after all, the point of a book is to entertain.

Zuckoff takes care not to just make this into an enumeration of facts; he breathes life, drama and excitement into a story that is already full of it, giving us a chance at actually getting emotionally involved and caring about the fates of those who already went through these things years ago.

With the survival also comes a little blend of mystery as the Coast Guard and North South Polar Inc., led by Lou Sapienza, attempt to figure out just what exactly happened to those planes, why they crashed, and where the other ones are.

Naturally there is no giant twist in the end a-la-Shyamalan, keeping the story grounded in reality and plausibility all the way. The blood-curling obstacles those men had to face are very well communicated to us, being precisely and vividly described, both in their physical and psychological effects.

As far as wilderness survival stories go, I have to admit that this, in my experience at least, was one of the most enthralling reads, perhaps for a couple of reasons: it takes place in the arctic (somewhere most of us simply die in five minutes), it actually happened, and there truly is intrigue to the book’s plot.

If you like stories about survival demonstrating the lengths the human character can take us, then I definitely recommend you give Frozen in Time a try.

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Mitchell Zuckoff Personal site Mitchell Zuckoff is a journalism professor at Boston university who has also branched out into literature, penning reputed works such as Lost in Shangri-La and 13 Hours in Benghazi. As a reporter he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, in addition to which he was given the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, amongst other honors.