After getting through two very interesting books in January, it took more than a month to get through my third book of the year, Searching for Franklin by Ken McGoogan. It sheds light on the fate of Sir John Franklin, a British Navy officer and arctic explorer who disappeared (along with two ships and over a hundred men) in Northern Canada while searching for the Northwest Passage in 1847. 

Over the following decades, many people searched for his remains and tried to figure out what caused his expedition to end in disaster. Despite his failure, Franklin became a somewhat legendary figure, and the mystery around his death held many people’s interest throughout the years. The remains of some of his men were found in various locations, and in 2014 and 2016, his ships (HMS Erebus and Terror) were finally found, but the grave of Franklin himself has never been discovered. 

While Franklin was considered a hero, and many places in Canada are named after him, he has become a more controversial figure in recent years and has been blamed for being unprepared and foolishly leading his men to their deaths. 

Although it’s interesting to get a glimpse into the lives of the arctic explorers and the native people of Canada’s history, Searching for Franklin is not a smooth narrative but rather a patchwork of information from various sources, which makes it less engaging than a book like The Wager. Unless you’re really into Canadian history or arctic exploration, you might want to skip this one!    

To shed light on something means “to provide information about something or to make something easier to understand.”

A patchwork is something made up of various parts or elements.