Cold Refuge - Softcover

By August of 1944 Germany has all but lost the Battle of the Atlantic, and its submarine wolfpacks are scattered and fighting for their own survival. Meanwhile, one U-boat is on a special mission to Canada's eastern Arctic. Having survived a Canadian bomber attack, U-807 services an unmanned German weather station in northern Labrador before carrying out a stealthy reconnaissance of an American airbase under construction on Baffin Island. Detected, the boat escapes from attacking enemy aircraft and warships by diving under ice into Hudson Strait and playing dead. To avoid the steel gauntlet forming behind them and to raid a known fuel cache, the boat risks heading further north into shallow, ice-choked Foxe Basin. And the skipper has other mysterious reasons too...A German scouting team stumbles upon two young Inuit, a brother and sister. They are captured and taken onto the U-boat to silence them and subsequently to exploit their local knowledge and survival skills as another winter, and an RCMP dogsled patrol, are coming their way. The power of nature and surprising encounters with arctic wildlife highlight their challenging passage through Foxe Basin. The boat replenishes its supplies by hunting wildlife and by raiding fuel caches and a shuttered trading post. Love and lust bloom between Soldier, the onboard commando, and the beautiful Sila. Tension builds between Soldier who wants to do battle and the commander who wants to remain inconspicuous and above all get his young crew safely home. An unconventional war story transforms into a cross-cultural survival tale where hope, despair, tragedy, and new beginnings are found within the frigid hull of what the Inuit siblings call the aqqaumasuuq.