Paperback release:
Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic
By Kevin Krajick
464 pages. List price: $16.00 ISBN 0805071857
Owl Books paperback
(Hardback: Henry Holt & Co., October 2001, $26)
The deepest mysteries of the earth-and of the human heart-are plumbed
in Kevin Krajick's riveting true tale of the 450-year-search for a North
American diamond mine, and the two men who finally found it, in the
remotest reaches of the Far North. In the late 1970s, these treasure
hunters set out on a twenty-year quest, along a fabled path that had
defied 16th-century explorers, Wild West fortune-seekers, and modern
geologists. They were an unlikely team: Chuck Fipke, a fanatical
prospector with a singular talent for finding sand-size mineral grains,
and Stew Blusson, an ultra-tough geologist and helicopter pilot.
Inventive, eccentric and ruthless, they followed a 5,000-mile trail of
clues left by predecessors from backwoods Arkansas up the glaciated high
Rockies, into the vast and haunted barren lands of northern Canada.
There they outwitted the immense De Beer cartel to make one of the
world's greatest diamond discoveries-setting off a stampede unseen since
the Klondike gold rush.
A story of obsession and scientific intrigue, Barren Lands is both an
elegy to one of earth's last great wild places, and an unforgettable
journey for those who, in the words of a nineteenth-century trapper,
"want to see that country before it is all gone."
Here are some reviews of the hardback edition:
"Compelling. A suspenseful thriller."-Library Journal
"A gripping yarn…. [and] eloquent portrayal of a place few will ever
see, the great treeless tundra."-Smithsonian Magazine
"Krajick shows himself to be a skilled reporter along the lines of John
McPhee but, for my money, with a better eye for what's
interesting."-Business Week
"Some of the most vivid impressions of the Canadian north I've
read."-National Post (Ottawa)
KEVIN KRAJICK is a prizewinning journalist whose articles have appeared
in National Geographic, Newsweek, The New York Times, Science, Discover,
Audubon, Smithsonian, and many other publications. He was a finalist
for the National Magazine Award for Public Service, and won the American
Geophysical Union's 1998 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science
Journalism. He lives in New York City.