WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE

Gorgeous coming-of-age story - a rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North.

If EAT, PRAY LOVE was set in the Arctic and written for the younger generation: Braverman combines history, myth, memory, with a strong personality. She offers a unique take on the challenges women face in the wilderness, and a broader look at gender dynamics.

Blair Braverman is a former wilderness guide and a competitive dogsledder. She spent several years conducting interviews about Arctic culture and the philosophy behind folk schools. While piecing together this beautiful memoir, she offers an intimate look into the strange and beautiful world of a place frozen in time.

Blair fell in love with the North when she was 19. She had left her home in California and moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, then worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to make a life for herself in the North, she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her.

By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless.

Blair faces physical exhaustion, being buried alive in an ice cave, driving a dogsled across the tundra in an escape from the Sami police and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.

Blair graduated from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Her work has appeared in magazines. She lives in Mountain, Wisconsin.