Resolution by Andrew Joyce

Click on the cover image to buy the book on Amazon

It is 1896 in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The largest gold strike in the annals of human history has just been made; however, word of the discovery will not reach the outside world for another year.

By happenstance, a fifty-nine-year-old Huck Finn and his lady friend, Molly Lee, are on hand, but they are not interested in gold. They have come to that neck of the woods seeking adventure.

Someone should have warned them, “Be careful what you wish for.”

When disaster strikes, they volunteer to save the day by making an arduous six hundred mile journey by dog sled in the depths of a Yukon winter. They race against time, nature, and man. With the temperature hovering around seventy degrees below zero, they must fight every day if they are to live to see the next.

On the frozen trail, they are put upon by murderers, hungry wolves, and hostile Indians, but those adversaries have nothing over the weather. At seventy below, your spit freezes a foot from your face. Your cheeks burn—your skin turns purple and black as it dies from the cold. You are in constant danger of losing fingers and toes to frostbite.

It is into this world that Huck and Molly race.

They cannot stop. They cannot turn back. They can only go on. Lives hang in the balance—including theirs.

Andrew Joyce

 

My Review

 

 

I never realised that Resolution was part of a series until after I finished reading it. It’s a perfect standalone novel, although now I do want to read the first two as well. Andrew Joyce writes a story that is pretty much impossible to put down once you get started.

Resolution’s heroes are none other than Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in fabulous incarnations that I can believe would be heartily approved of by Mark Twain himself. Tom doesn’t have a major part on this book, but the fabulous Molly – Huck’s love, makes up for that and then some.

Molly and Huck head off to Alaska on a grand adventure, and happen to be right there when the biggest gold strike of all time is made. They’re not interested in panning for gold though. Instead they find themselves up against both man and nature as they race across the snow in deadly sub-zero temperatures on a dog sled to get a man home by a certain very important date.

I was mostly on the edge of my seat – the action doesn’t stop, but there is so much wit, love, and just plain fabulous life in this story, I loved it all the way through. Andrew Joyce is the real deal, and an awesome storyteller in his own right, right up there with Mr Twain.