In Irish novelist Cormac James's "vivid, hypnotic, and acutely piercing" (Colum McCann) North American debut, a ship's lieutenant discovers a stowaway, pregnant with his child, while battling crushing Arctic ice

"An extraordinary novel, combining a powerful narrative with a considered and poetic use of language. . . . Reading the book, I recalled the dramatic natural landscape of Jack London and the wild untamed seas of William Golding." --John Boyne

Far from civilization, on the hunt for Sir John Franklin's recently lost Northwest Passage expedition, Lieutenant Morgan and his crew find themselves trapped in ever-hardening Arctic ice that threatens to break apart their ship. When Morgan realizes that a stowaway will give birth to his child in the frozen wilderness, he finds new clarity and courage to lead his men across a bleak expanse as shifting, stubborn, and treacherous as human nature itself.

A harrowing tale of psychological fortitude against impossible odds, The Surfacing is also a beautifully told story of one man's transformative journey toward fatherhood.