Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman: Travels with Sled Dogs in Canada's Frozen North

by Polly Evans

Book Overview

In the dead of winter, Polly Evans ventures to the remote Yukon Territory in Canada's far northwest, where temperatures plunge to minus forty and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. Her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385341113
• ISBN13: 9780385341110
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Delta
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Fun and Funny

The title of Polly Evans's book is, of course, a twist on the Noel Coward song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (they "go out in the midday sun"). In Polly's memoire, mad dogs and an English WOMAN go out in the midNIGHT sun. And the Northern Lights, and endless snowfields and forests, and iced roads and thawing rivers, and weird and wonderful people and DOGS, all of which she describes with grace and generosity and, occasionally, outright eloquence, in just those spots where it's called for. Generally, when I review a non-fiction book, I address things like bibliographies, indices, and charts. This personal memoire doesn't call for them, but it does need a better map of the area. The tracing of the Quest dogsled race route gives no idea how the author got from point to point on it by road: we need roads to follow the routes vehicles took and trailmaps to follow the snowmobiles, and there are many features she cites that are not located. But her story is terribly trenchant. I was born in England and raised in Montreal, and experienced the kind of culture (or climate) shock Canada presents to the unititiated; in Evans's book, you can experience it too.