Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North

By: Blair Braverman

Narrated by: Blair Braverman

A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman confronting her fears and finding home in the North.

Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was nineteen, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska.

By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair’s endeavor to become a “tough girl”—someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless. As she ventures into a ruthless arctic landscape, Blair faces down physical exhaustion—being buried alive in an ice cave, and driving a dogsled across the tundra through a whiteout blizzard in order to avoid corrupt police—and grapples with both love and violence as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.

Brilliantly original and bracingly honest, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of the journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.

Beautiful tale of finding oneself

For those who love the north, this memoir off fi ding one's strength, home and purpose is powerful.

A beautiful look into the life of a female musher

Blair put into words what many female mushers experience. An excellent story of pure grit.

Unique and compelling…

I really enjoyed listening to this book. It’s a deeper story than just the title infers. Blaire’s call to the north and to dog mushing is only half of the tale. Her experiences as a young woman thrown into a world of predatory men, as well as her life in the far north country, and the healing time amongst a small, complex Norwegian community that became extended family kept me intrigued and riveted. I especially liked hearing it in Blaire’s voice. I recommend this book whole heartedly!

Okay Read

This memoir was good for what it was; my problem with it was that it was marketed as an adventure narrative, and it turned out to be more about coming-of-age and sexuality. I wanted more about the dogs and dogsledding and living on the ice and the people of Norway (those parts were great) and less about the men in Blair's life and their sexual tensions.

Blair Braverman read the account herself, and I do enjoy that. She is a somewhat flat reader, but still, I like the story in the writer's own voice.

A compelling and remarkable story

This book is extraordinary. An insightful, sometimes wrenching, sometimes joyful glimpse into an unusual and remarkable life.