SURFNETKIDS GROWN-UP NONFICTION BOOK CLUB Got shopping? Get discounts! Visit Surfnetkids: Coupons, Deals and Bargains for hundreds of discounts from dozens of online stores. This week's book: THE LAST GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER by Edward Beauclerk Maurice FROM THE BOOK JACKET: At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company--the company of Gentleman ended up at an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no communication with the outside world and only one ship arrived each year. But he was not alone. The Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became completely immersed in their culture, earning the name Issumatak, meaning "he who thinks." In "The Last Gentleman Adventurer," Edward Beauclerk Maurice relates his story of coming of age in the Arctic and transports the reader to a time and a way of life now lost forever. *New to the book club? Just click on the Missing Read link below for any emails you may have missed. Go to: (Today's book starts after the "Dear Reader" column.) Dear Reader, Today you can sample Barbara Bretton's book "Just Desserts" and I have 15 copies to give away. Barbara and I have never met in person, yet it feels like we're old friends. She reads along with us every day and is one of the book club's biggest cheerleaders. I teasingly suggested that since I'm featuring her book, she could write a column and give me the day off. After all what are friends for? And by golly that's just what she did. A few words from Barbara Bretton: As I type this I'm a few days away from finishing my latest novel. I don't know what day of the week it is. I'm pretty sure it's still March but I wouldn't bet money on it. My hair is pulled back in a scraggly ponytail. I'm wearing pajama bottoms, one of my husband's old t-shirts, a fifteen year old red sweater, and bunny slippers. (Yes, bunny slippers.) My eyes haven't seen mascara in months. In fact I haven't seen daylight in months. In an attempt to keep temptation at bay I've flipped day for night and am currently living the life of a middle-aged vampire whose highlights seriously need refreshing. Last year I wrote a book about a baker and turned to knitting for relaxation. This year I'm writing about a knitter and I've turned to baking! If I'm not knitting my way through a knotty book problem, I'm baking my way toward a solution. This past Saturday I wrote myself into a corner. Sometimes the strangest things will stop a writer cold. Once I actually had a character trapped on the third step from the top for two weeks because I couldn't come up with the simple words, "She climbed the stairs." Anyway I was stumbling my way around the house Saturday afternoon muttering plot points under my breath when my husband turned the oven on to preheat and said, "Go bake something." So I did. For some reason I have always wanted to make my own bagels. Which is probably crazy since we have three perfectly fine bagel shops within a two-mile radius of our house. I dug out my recipe from the wonderful blog Baking and Books, assembled my ingredients, started a pot of water boiling, plugged in my beloved nineteen year old Kitchen Aid stand mixer, and got to work. By the time I set the dough to rise I could feel the book knots starting to untie themselves. I worked a little on the book while the dough did its thing. I let my mind wander while I punched it down and formed it into circles. One bagel, two bagels, eight bagels, twelve bagels all ready to be dropped into a pot of boiling water, drained, then covered with poppy seeds or sesame seeds or kosher salt or whatever struck my fancy. Pop into a 500 degree oven for sixteen minutes or so (remember to turn them; I forgot one and it got a little scorched) and start gathering compliments. And guess what? By the time my husband and I gobbled up some fresh- from-the-oven bagels with cream cheese, I had figured my way out of the book problem and was back at work again. Some writers go shoe shopping when they hit the wall. Some writers go for a run. Some writers even throw in the towel. Me? I bake. Not great for the waistline but it's wonderful for the imagination! So here I am, maybe seventy-two hours away from typing THE END. In my fictional world I have a knitter in danger, a cop trapped in a cemetery, and magic breaking out all over the place. In my real world, I have an oven preheating and the ingredients for a sour cream coffee cake on the counter. Life is good! Thanks Barbara. To sample "Just Desserts" and to enter the book giveaway, go to: and if you'd like Barbara's Sour Cream Coffee Cake recipe (and the stories that go with it) drop her a note at with RECIPE in the subject header and she'll zip it out to you. Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends. Suzanne Beecher AUTHORBUZZ: New authors, old favorites--all wonderful books worth your time. Win free copies of books you'll be so glad you discovered: Susan Shapiro Barash, "Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie;" Joanna Hershon, "The German Bride;" Debbie Macomber, "Back on Blossom Street;" Lisa Tucker, "Cure for Modern Life;" and Michael W. Sherer, "Island Life." Go to: * * * *Read the Classics: THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton and enter the free Penguin Classic's Drawing. Go to: Surfing the Net with Kids: Email me: Missing an email? Go to: =====TODAY'S Today We Begin a New Book! THE LAST GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER Coming of Age in the Arctic by Edward Beauclerk Maurice (nonfiction) Published by Houghton Mifflin Company ISBN: 9780618517510 Copyright (c) 2004 by Patricia Maurice Foreword copyright (c) 2005 by Lawrence Millman To reference this email: GENTLEMAN (Part 1 of 5) *This book contains adult language. CHAPTER ONE At ten o'clock in the morning of 2 June 1930 about forty young men gathered round a noticeboard set up on Euston station, which bore the message 'BOAT TRAIN, DUCHESS OF BEDFORD LIVERPOOL. HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY PARTY'. The other travellers hurrying to and fro across the concourse, impelled to haste by the alarming pantings, snufflings and whist- lings coming from the impatient engines, hardly spared us a glance, despite the flavour of distant adventure in that simple notice. For in those days, London was still the centre of a great empire and it was commonplace for parties to be seen gathering at railway stations, or at other places of departure, to begin their long journeys to far-away places. Tea planters for India and Ceylon. Rubber planters for Malaya. Mining engineers for South Africa. Ad- ministrators for the Indian and other civil services. Policemen for the African colonies. Farm workers to seek their fortunes in Australia, New Zealand or Canada. Traders for the South Seas. Serv- icemen for all quarters of the globe and wanderers just seeking sunshine or adventure. We were to be apprenticed to the fur trade 'somewhere in Canada'. In age we were between sixteen and twenty-three. In occupation there were schoolboys, farm labourers, office workers, factory workers, estate workers, forestry people and even two seamen. We had been told of the wonderful opportunities that awaited us, but what our informants had not known was that the worst depression the world would experience for many years was fast developing. Already the feverish post-war boom was collapsing. The sudden loss of confi- dence and the general insecurity of the world markets was soon to undermine the fur trade. Before some of us had finally reached our new homes, the whole department responsible for our engagement had been disbanded, with its members released to swell the ever growing ranks of the unemployed. Never again would a party such as ours gather in London. An oriental philosopher once wrote that no matter how near or far the destination, every journey must somewhere have a starting point. My journey began in the June of the halcyon summer of 1913, to which so many thousands of women were to look back with aching nostalgia for all the rest of their years. The shadow fell across my mother's life sooner than it did for the others. Six weeks before I was born, in the evening of a long mid- summer's day, my father was brought home spread-eagled over a bro- ken gate, dead of a terrible gunshot wound to the head. Controversy, seemingly inseparable from the human state even in such tragic circumstances, broke out at once. The vicar refused my grand- mother's request that her son's body should be brought into the parish church to await burial, on the grounds that he might have committed suicide. The coroner would have to give him earthly clear- ance from this suspicion before the church could grant him asylum. The clergyman had mistakenly supposed his parishioner, my grand- mother, to be a meek and pious woman, an error he was never to repeat. He was astonished by the ferocity with which she defended her son's right to rest in the church, and reluctantly gave way. So my father, poised as it were on the very threshold of eternity, was brought for the last time into the cool, dim, silent shadow of the ancient building, perhaps there to find the peace he had been seeking. The following day the coroner decided that death had been due to misadventure, thus calming the vicar's disquiet and giving at least some hope of an onward journey to heaven. For those that were left on earth, and in particular for my mother, the problems were just beginning. Aged twenty-three, with three children already and a fourth ex- pected, her outlook was bleak indeed, for there was no provision at that time for disasters such as this. No help could be expected from the state, since there was no social security or child allow- ances. Those who fell by the wayside, whether it was their own fault or not, had to pick themselves up or, as a last desperate measure, appeal to the workhouse guardians for relief. My grandmother then decided she was in need of a housekeeping companion and that her daughter-in-law could fill this position. There would be no pay as such, but food for the young widow and her children would be provided, sparingly as it turned out, and even more sparingly, clothes. Children's garments could be made from oddments, sewn, knitted and handed down. As for my mother, now that she was a widow and would wear black for the rest of her life as Queen Victoria had done, she could inherit the old lady's cast-offs, suitably trimmed to size and shape. This was how my family came to live in a large, cold Victorian house in a small township on the north Somersetshire coast. My mother brought with her all that she possessed in the world. A few items of bedroom furniture. A dressing table and a little jewellery, a few books and a Colt revolver with six rounds of ammunition. What des- perate resolve prompted her to bring these last two items I do not know, nor did I ever inquire. The year after our arrival, 1914, the Great War broke out. Perhaps the atmosphere of emergency and the heavy emotional demands made upon most of the young women of her generation helped my mother resign herself, at least temporarily, to living the routine of her elderly mother-in-law. (continued on Tuesday) =========BUY Use this link to get the best price on this week's book: To locate or purchase OTHER BOOKS use this link: =======SHARE THE You can forward this email to your friends and relatives. Encourage them to join our book clubs. It's a great way to stay in touch even if you live thousands of miles apart. Questions, comments or book suggestions? Contact me, Barbara J. Feldman, at: Inc., 991C Lomas Santa Fe Dr. #415 Solana Beach, CA 92075 You are currently buy onlined to surfgrownup as: To purchase send a blank email to To join any of the free Surfnetkids Book Clubs, visit:

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