Summary

Two harrowing crashes . . . A vanished rescue plane . . . A desperate fight for life in a frozen, hostile land . . . The quest to solve a seventy-year-old mystery

The author of the smash New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La delivers a gripping true story of endurance, bravery, ingenuity, and honor set in the vast Arctic wilderness of World War II and today.

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men flew into a severe storm and vanished.

In this thrilling adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing disasters and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors. Frozen in Time places us at the center of a group of valiant airmen fighting to stay alive through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter by sheltering from subzero temperatures and vicious blizzards in the tail section of the broken B-17 until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen attempts to bring them to safety.

But that is only part of the story that unfolds in Frozen in Time. In present-day Greenland, Zuckoff joins the U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar--a company led by the indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza, who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck's last flight--on a dangerous expedition to recover the remains of the lost plane's crew.

Drawing on intensive research and Zuckoff 's firsthand account of the dramatic 2012 expedition, Frozen in Time is a breathtaking blend of mystery, adventure, heroism, and survival. It is also a poignant reminder of the sacrifices of our military personnel and their families--and a tribute to the important, perilous, and often-overlooked work of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this harrowing true-life adventure, journalist Zuckoff (Lost in Shangri-La) follows the crew of an American B-17 bomber that crash-landed in 1942-while searching for another downed plane-on a vast glacier in the Greenland ice cap, one of the most isolated and inhospitable places on earth. With little food or cold-weather gear and an assortment of nasty injuries, the nine airmen found themselves trapped in a field of hidden, ever-shifting crevasses that threatened to swallow up their plane and made hiking even a few yards a mortal danger. Zuckoff juxtaposes their months-long battle against hurricane-blizzards, starvation, frost-bite, gangrene and madness with equally perilous rescue attempts by sled teams and military aviators flying through gales and white-outs. (His tense first-hand account of a 2012 expedition to locate the remains of one of those rescue flights buried in 30-foot-deep ice frames the story.) Zuckoff's gripping narrative unfolds with immediacy and verve as men in fetid snow caves and sputtering aircraft pit their dogged camaraderie and desperate, white-knuckle improvisations against the fury of an Arctic winter. Photos. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

It sounds so implausible that you think it must be fiction: in 1942, a U.S. military cargo plane crashed in Greenland; soon after, a B-17 bomber, assigned to the rescue mission, also crashed; and, not much longer after that, a Coast Guard rescue plane carrying one of the B-17 survivors disappeared in a storm. Facts, not fiction. Nearly seven decades later, Lou Sapienza, a commercial photographer who documented an earlier effort to find lost WWII planes, put together an expedition to Greenland aimed at finding out what happened to that Coast Guard plane. Author Zuckoff tagged along, chronicling the adventures of the colorful Sapienza while also telling us, through flashbacks, the story of the survivors of the B-17 crash and their months-long ordeal to stay alive while awaiting rescue. Zuckoff, who also wrote 2011's Lost in Shangri-La (about a different but equally compelling WWII crash-and-rescue story), juggles the modern-day and historical stories adroitly, making us feel as though we are right there with the crash survivors, fighting against the bitter cold.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Zuckoff (journalism, Boston Univ.; Lost in Shangri-La) here writes an account of the U.S. cargo plane that crashed into the Greenland ice cap on November 5, 1942, and the subsequent attempts to rescue the survivors. Four days later, the search and rescue plane also crashed. The ensuing narrative is a fascinating reminder of the sacrifices of American military personnel and their families. Well read by the author, this is an extraordinary tale of adventure and heroism. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of suspense, military history, and adventure. ["This tale of true heroism, human ingenuity, and sacrifice by ordinary people in the face of a bitter enemy is for anyone interested not only in World War II aviation or modern scientific techniques for locating missing aircraft but in popular histories of real adventure," read the starred review of the New York Times best-selling Harper hc, LJ 4/15/13.-Ed.]-Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of Northern Alabama, Florence (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.