Prisoners of the North

The five mid-19th- to mid-20th-century Arctic adventurers Berton profiles here won't be familiar to most readers, but that doesn't make them any less heroic. Joe Boyle, ""King of the Klondike,"" for example, was an innovative gold prospector who was never satisfied settling in one situation for too long, whether it was with a wife or in a job. This inability to stay in one place eventually made him a hero in Romania, where, after a series of extraordinary events, he became a trusted intermediary between that country's citizens and the Bolsheviks. Similar stories about amazing accomplishments fill this workmanlike yet quirky book, as Berton, a veteran Arctic chronicler (Klondike Fever, etc.), sheds light on the lives of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who deeply admired and lived among the Inuit; Lady Jane Griffin, the first woman to be awarded the Royal Geographic Society's Founders Medal; naturalist John Hornby, who took pride in his ability to live off the land yet starved to death on the banks of the Thelon River thanks to a terrible miscalculation; and poet Robert Service, ""the Bard of the North."" Although the work suffers at times from a plodding pace, there's no denying Berton's admiration for these people. As he shows, they were always seeking and never satisfied; it's the quintet's shared feeling of wanderlust that makes this book endearing. Photos.