Shannon Huffman Polson has written a soulful and brave book about death, life, and the complexities surrounding both. There is nothing sentimental in these pages. North of Hope shows us how personal loss and loss of our planet come from the same place: Love. This is a testament to deep change, human and wild.
—Terry Tempest Williams
author, When Women Were Birds
Daring, perceptive, and eloquent—Polson’s writing is clear and forceful. Like all true pilgrimages, this one is challenging, and well worth taking.
—Scott Russell Sanders
author, Earth Works and A Conservationist Manifesto
Polson’s extraordinary journey draws you into the depths of anguish and brings you back out realizing that while not all things fractured can be healed, the soul will gravitate toward beauty, art, and meaning if guided in the right direction.
—Alison Levine
mountaineer, polar explorer, and team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition
North of Hope is an enthralling story of loss, courage, and redemption told by a gifted, original, and brave new voice, Shannon Huffman Polson.
—Robert Clark
award-winning author of ten books, including Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces and Mr. White’s Confession
As Shannon Polson poignantly recounts the loss of family members to a grizzly attack in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, framing her memoir around her own trek into the wilderness where they perished, she comes to believe that there is grace and wonder in the most unlikely places, that the landscape’s wildness can teach you about letting go of control, and that Easter doesn’t arrive until you’ve experienced Good Friday. Anyone who has endured the grief of losing someone or something they loved will identify with the advice Polson was given: “When tragedy comes into your life, the most beautiful thing you can do is keep moving forward.”
—Cindy Crosby
former National Park Ranger and author of By Willoway Brook: Exploring the Landscape of Prayer
(www.cindycrosby.com)
Shannon Polson brilliantly tells the story of venturing into the Alaskan wilderness to find the place where her parents were killed. Interwoven with that journey is the story of how she auditioned for and sang the Mozart Requiem. Only music could provide solace for her strange, almost unimaginable loss. This is no ordinary memoir. To read it is to be changed.
—Jeanne Walker
author, New Tracks, Night Falling
Shannon Huffman Polson has written a book about loss that is both unique to her personal experience and universal to the human experience. She writes with clarity, honesty, and poise. The end of her story has the surreal feel of fiction—a moment so unbelievable and fitting that it must have happened. Readers will find themselves caught up in that poetic end, and in the breadth of story that comes before it.
—Andrea Palpant Dilley
author, Faith and Other Flat Tires:
Searching for God on the Rough Road of Doubt
North of Hope, Shannon Polson’s gripping account of the shattering, traumatic loss of her father, is a must read. In the end, Shannon is faced with a choice—does she choose the beauty and majesty of life or succumb to the pain and trauma of the loss of her beloved father? It is only after her father’s death that she truly listens to, and embraces, his message—to believe in her own strength and to live a life of meaning and purpose. Shannon’s book is a gift to everyone who reads this powerful, inspiring story.
—Janet Hanson
CEO and founder, 85 Broads
North of Hope is a remarkable story about the power of the wilderness both to harm and to heal, and to provide strength and sustenance to the human spirit, no matter what the challenges.
—Nicholas O’Connell
author, The Storms of Denali;
instructor, www.thewritersworkshop.net