Icefields is a story of adventure and discovery that unfolds amidst the stunning beauty of the Canadian Rockies. Presented within the frame of a tourist guidebook, this novel records life in the mountains, as time and the coming of the railroad slowly transform the settlement of Jasper from a place of myth and legend to a modern tourist town. Exhaustively researched, this novel blends geology and poetry, fact and fiction, history and imagination.
Peter Simpson
Telegraph-Journal
"Crosses Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" with Peter Hoeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow," . . . Ironic, brilliant, and unforgettable . . ."
R. W. Sandford
The Jasper Booster Community
"Spare and simple, like the glaciers and frozen peaks he describes, Wharton's writing mirror the beauty of the high alpine landscape. . . . It is not often that you come across a locally written classic."
Larry Watson
Author of "Montana 1948" and "Justice"
""Icefields" is a wonderful novel. Thomas Wharton writes prose that feels simultaneously stripped-down yet lush. He takes an ordinary, realistic place -- that plain, icy mountain -- and makes it exotic, magical, extraordinary."
Joy Gugeler
The Ottawa Citizen
"A stunning debut. . . . Wharton's poetic passages betray a slow flame beneath the cool prose, a raw intense curiosity which fascinates and lays everything bare. His characters are memorably distinct and his portrait of the Rockies is at once exhaustive and engaging."
Susan Taylor Chehak
Author of "Smithereens"
"What an accomplishment. . . . A magical story, told with such cool reserve -- the deceptive simplicity of its language and the multifaceted complexity of time, character, and plot, so much like the ice cathedral that it describes, held me completely in its thrall. . . . I'm haunted by those people and that place."
Mark Glles
The Calgary Herald
"Wharton writes with a prose style as clear as glacial waters, tempered with brilliant imagery and lucid dialogue. . . . If at times the style betrays Wharton's influences -- there are glimpses of Michael Ondaatje, Rudy Wiebe, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Kristjana Gunnars -- it is never imitative; Wharton is an original writer and "Icefields" is an original novel."
Peter SimpsonTelegraph-Journal"Crosses Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" with Peter Hoeg's "Smilla's Sense of Snow," . . . Ironic, brilliant, and unforgettable . . ."
R. W. SandfordThe Jasper Booster Community"Spare and simple, like the glaciers and frozen peaks he describes, Wharton's writing mirror the beauty of the high alpine landscape. . . . It is not often that you come across a locally written classic."
Larry WatsonAuthor of "Montana 1948" and "Justice"""Icefields" is a wonderful novel. Thomas Wharton writes prose that feels simultaneously stripped-down yet lush. He takes an ordinary, realistic place -- that plain, icy mountain -- and makes it exotic, magical, extraordinary."
Joy GugelerThe Ottawa Citizen"A stunning debut. . . . Wharton's poetic passages betray a slow flame beneath the cool prose, a raw intense curiosity which fascinates and lays everything bare. His characters are memorably distinct and his portrait of the Rockies is at once exhaustive and engaging."
