If this were a Hollywood script, I hope someone will call rewrite.

Understand that I'm a cranky old guy, but I don't like it when someone sells me fiction in the guise of non-fiction. To be clear: You can see that this book is fiction if you see it in a store.

Good luck seeing it in a store. You're likely to get it by mail order. If so, this is your warning. It's a fictionalized version of a story that doesn't need to be fiction! Varick Frissel was a film-maker who, starting in the late 1920s, had gone to Newfoundland to make a documentary about the Newfoundland seal hunt. He went on an actual sealing ship -- though he insisted on hiring Robert A. Bartlett, the famous arctic explorer who had also been a (mostly ineffective) sealing captain, to play the role of the ship's captain even though the ship involved had a perfectly competent real captain.

Frissel's first trip got him enough footage to make a movie, but the backers didn't consider it dramatic enough. They wanted drama! Excitement! Icebergs! Yeah, that's the ticket! -- they sent Frissel back to Newfoundland to go out sealing again, only this time, taking enough dynamite to make the ice blow up and do scary-looking things.

Unfortunately, instead of blowing up the ice, someone in the crew blew up the ship, the S. S. Viking, instead. Several dozen of the hundreds of men on the Viking died, including Frissel, and others were sorely hurt. Some of those who survived the explosion were killed by exposure afterward. The disaster is still widely remembered in Newfoundland, and has gone into their folklore.

So: A dramatic tale. You could make a movie about it. You could certainly make a non-fiction book about it. It would not only be a great story, but you would know when to trust it and when not to.

Sadly, that book hasn't been written. Instead, we have this piece of fiction. There really isn't much else to turn to, except for short accounts in histories of the seal hunt. (For the record, all of the information I gave above is from the non-fiction sources.)

If you're willing to read fiction about this event, then it's the only full-length account available of a very dramatic event. But, I repeat, you have been warned. ( )