An adventure story, Trapped in Ice is a fictionalized account of a real 1913 Canadian Arctic expedition that included a 13-year-old girl, Helen, her younger brother, and their seamstress mother. The expedition ran into trouble from the beginning. Abandoned by their leader and frozen in the ice, their ship, the Karluk, drifted away from land. When the ship was eventually crushed, the crew had to make an arduous journey across moving ice to land to await rescue. The ship’s captain, Robert Bartlett, the only one with Arctic experience, made an epic sled journey to Siberia to get help.

This is a good story with a strong central character who grows as the plot progresses. The relationship between Bartlett and Helen develops believably and the captain is well drawn despite a Newfoundland accent that is strained at times. Helen’s brother is less well defined and often appears too young for his 11 years.

Many details of Arctic life ring true. For example, Helen has to thaw her bottle of ink over a candle before she can write in her diary, and her encounter with a polar bear is genuinely exciting. Unfortunately, Eric Walters has changed much of the historical reality in the service of his plot. The real Helen was part of an Inuit family whose hunting expertise helped keep the crew alive while Bartlett went for help. The journey over the ice after the Karluk sank was extremely harsh, with many of the party suffering from frostbite and several of them dying. A dreamy southern girl such as the fictional Helen would not have fared well.

It is understandable that Walters has softened some of the harshness of the real expedition to make Helen’s adventures stand out, but it’s a shame he hasn’t captured more of the spirit of what the real adventure must have been like. It weakens an otherwise strong story’s value as a historical resource.