AustLit

'Summer 1897: Three Swedish men set off on a perilous journey. Led by Salomon August Andrée, they hope to reach the North Pole in a hot air balloon. The expedition fails miserably. Despite rescue missions throughout the remaining years of the century, the party - Andrée, Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg - are lost to the world until 1930, when Norwegian sealers inadvertently discover the men's remains in the expedition's final camp on a small tundra called Kvitøya, in the Arctic Ocean. 1930: Smug, young Swedish journalist, Knut Stubbendorff, is sent to report from the site. Among the remains he finds the private journal of Nils Strindberg, filled with letters written to his fiancée, a young governess named Anna Charlier. Moved by the sincerity and emotion of these love messages he sets off on a journey of his own to find the woman and pass on Nils' letters. Two men, two eras, one woman - can Stubbendorff unravel this mysterious love story that the past has kept secret?' (Publisher's blub)