[Elisha Kent Kane] hoped to publish a book on the voyage and wrote and sketched extensively. These sketches are testimony, writes [Ken McGoogan], to the fact of global climate change. Nothing is left of the massive ice mountains Kane drew in 1850-1851; today the land is ice free Arctic desert.

Before the Arctic winter locked the expedition's ships into the ice for the winter, Kane was part of the crew that discovered the graves of three of Franklin's men on Beechy Island. The find galvanized hope that Franklin might be found, and Kane was determined to lead his own expedition to the Arctic.

McGoogan uses Kane's detailed journals to recreate a vivid, virtually day-by-day accounting of the struggles the crew faced and the hardships they overcame. He also shows the unyielding commitment Kane had to these men, whose lives rested in his hands, even though most were malingering, mutinous shirkers.