Tolboom, Wanda Neill (1920-2007) — Arctic Bride

Toronto, Ontario, Canada The Ryerson Press, Publishers First Edition, First Printing pp. 256. 8vo. Publisher's light-yellow cloth over boards with navy blue rules and lettering to the spine. Richly illustrated with many black-and-white photographs and portraits. Extremities exceptionally well-preserved, contents equally without blemish with bright, clean, and unmarked pages and firm, sound binding; near fine and housed in very good+ original, unclipped, dustjacket showing very slight wear along the head of spine panel. Overall, near fine. An unusually well-preserved copy. Life among the Eskimos, in an isolated Hudson's Bay Company trading post on the far northeastern shore of Hudson Bay, is vividly and engagingly described by a Manitoba girl who went North to marry the Post Manager and spent the first two years of her married life there. The nearest white neighbours were one hundred miles away, and, except for occasional visitors from the Outside by plane or on the H.B. ship Nascopie, their only associates were Eskimos.There are discerning pictures of Eskimo character and ways of life, accounts of seal and whale hunts, and exciting stories of trips through dangerous waters clogged with drifting ice in a small motor-powered boat. Daily life at the Post through the changes of season, trading with the Eskimos, treating their illnesses, helping them through hard winters, travelling by dog-sled to visit far-off Posts, and entertaining visitors from the Outside, are described with sensitiveness and frequent touches of humour. The reader is made to see and feel the wild charm of the Arctic landscape in many fine pieces of descriptive writing, writing that gives an intimate picture of what life is like the year round in a land peopled almost wholly by Eskimos.