Robyn Mundy has set this story in the high Arctic, an area with which she is familiar, and the freezing atmosphere has a major role to play in the story.

Mundy has worked seasonally as deputy expedition leader on tours to Antarctica, Svalbard, East Greenland, Scotland, the Faroes, Norway and Alaska. She has used field and archival research in this story of the first female trapper, Wanny Woldstad, who travels to Svalbard, an archipelago north-west of Norway, in 1932-33.

At almost 40 years old, a widow with two sons, this diminutive woman had already created a precedent by becoming Tromsø’s first female taxi driver. A crack shot and used to a hard life, she persuaded an experienced trapper to take her to the islands, specifically Spitzbergen, for the 12-month trapping season, seeking bearskins and arctic foxes.

Woldstad wrote her own book, drawing on her diaries of five seasons spent at Svalbard, which was published in 1956. It is ironic that after surviving encounters with polar bears, glacier crossings, and icy seas in a rowing boat, she was killed by a truck in 1959.

Mundy has interspersed her account of that 1932-33 season, with Woldstad gradually earning the trust and respect of her more experienced trapper partner, and graphic descriptions of a fox family’s life. Particularly, a ‘blue’ fox whose pelt in winter turns a glorious sought-after silver, who becomes a familiar figure to the trappers. Those Arctic islands come to life in Mundy’s capable hands; the trappers’ lives are shown in fine detail as are those of Svalbard’s foxes and bears.

Just make sure you read it on a warm and sunny day.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville