True North: Hunting Fossils Under the Midnight Sun

As a bored child in a working class family, Lou Marincovich imagined a life of adventure and strong emotions-and got far more than he anticipated. Inspired to become a paleontologist by a children's book on dinosaurs, he plunged into realms of life where intellectuals rarely go, working hardhat jobs on offshore oil drilling platforms in equatorial Africa and Alaska to put himself through grad school and laboring beside cutthroat coworkers, one of whom he was barely stopped from murdering. Later, as an internationally recognized paleontologist, he spent three decades researching fossil mollusks in the surreal landscapes of remotest Alaska, Arctic Canada and Siberia. In the course of documenting faunal and climate changes in the Arctic over the span of 60 million years, he solved the mystery of Bering Strait's age; discovered an unnamed river; survived a helicopter crash, several bush plane accidents, a near-drowning in an icy river, landslides, and punishing storms; and saved his own life by shooting a charging grizzly with his last bullet. In addition to finding the adventure he craved as a young man, Marincovich was rewarded by surprising and profound spiritual experiences, during one of which he found his soul mate. This is a unique story of youthful yearning, high adventure, moral lapses, scientific discovery and love.