This astonishing true survival tale chronicles a 16th-century Dutch ocean expedition led by captain William Barents and his crew of sixteen, who ventured farther north than any Europeans before and, on their third polar exploration, lost their ship off the frozen coast of Nova Zembla to unforgiving ice. The men would spend the next year fighting off ravenous polar bears, gnawing hunger, and endless winter. Artfully merging a gripping tale of survival with a sweeping history of the great Age of Exploration, it is a timeless story of the strength of the human spirit.