Kathleen Winter was working as an itinerant writer, with three books of fiction to her name, when a friend called saying he had been offered a berth as writer-in-residence on a tourist ship. The two-week journey was to begin on the east coast of Greenland and proceed across the Davis Strait and through the channels of the Northwest Passage, ending in the Canadian settlement of Kugluktuk. The friend had to pull out. Would Winter go instead?

Boundless tells the story of that voyage. The book is a lyrical, tentative meditation on northern latitudes, interspersed with a great deal of autobiography. Winter is extremely interested in her fellow travellers, especially two women indigenous to the North whose role is to talk to paying passengers about the old