![]() ![]() The claustrophobic polar setting is a quick and effective way to push Shaw uncomfortably into each character’s minuscule radius of personal space. The claustrophobic polar setting is a quick and effective way to push Shaw uncomfortably into each character’s minuscule radius of personal space When Hunt goes missing, Shaw must take up the captain’s mantle, at least temporarily, to see things through. Templeton, an uptight biologist who fittingly resembles a steely-eyed draugr, seems to be the only one invested in finding the twin ship. It’s clear that Hunt is keeping secrets, and once we’re aboard, it becomes even clearer that the captain - while loved and respected by the crew - is totally checked out. The job is to find the Temperance’s missing sister ship, the Viscount. The story begins by meeting Captain Hunt, an enigmatic old salt who hires my faceless character, Robin Shaw, as first mate aboard the Temperance. But really, what are humans without hubris? At first blush, it’s a straightforward survival simulator where I expect the worst to happen, because there’s nothing positive that can come from forcibly inserting a bunch of soft, vulnerable mammals into an icebound hellscape that simply does not wish to host them. I’m not doing an intense gastronomical LARP - I’m playing The Pale Beyond, a survival-driven adventure that takes a page from tales of late-19th-century polar explorers, and perhaps more recently, the first season of AMC’s historical thriller The Terror (which was, in turn, based on an actual lost expedition). It’s survival cooking - hoosh is a sort of Antarctic explorer’s gruel made with whatever’s lying around, from penguins to dead sled dogs, and under dire circumstances, the unsavory products of “the custom of the sea.” As someone with a morbid fascination with weird historical food, it’s easy for me to obsess over the hoosh, but as a stalwart upholder of civilization, I refuse to succumb to cannibalism. Questions of Jewish faith and tradition, the socialist agenda and a growing feminist awareness provide the backdrop to this moving chronicle of strength and love that triumph over inhumanity.On my maiden voyage to the middle of frozen nowhere, I’ve made a new best friend: the hoosh pot. Dykewomon skillfully interweaves historical details-from the conditions of life in Eastern Europe's Pale of Settlement to the mechanics of early printing presses. Ironically, the eventual catalyst for change is the horrifying 1912 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which Chava's cousin and lover, Rosa, is one of the victims. With the encouragment of Gutke and her cross-dressing lover, Dovida, Chava becomes involved in the trade union movement, determined to improve deplorable working conditions. Both women have strong memories of political unrest, anti-Semitism and poverty in Russia, and the narrative alternates the stories of their transformation as they enter a new world and a new century. In the U.S., she crosses paths with midwife Gutke Gurvich, who had attended her birth. Teenager Chava Meyer, orphaned during the attack, endures an excruciating Atlantic passage with the relatives who have adopted her. With evocative background detail, this novel by the author of the 1974 lesbian/feminist classic Riverfinger Women follows the lives of two Jewish women who flee Russia after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. ![]()
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