Synopses & Reviews
In the tradition of Sebastian' Junger's
The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer's
Into Thin Air,
Barren Lands is the extraordinary tale of two small-time prospectors who risked their lives to discover $17 billion worth of diamonds in the desolate tundra of the far north.
In the late 1970's, two men set out on a twenty-year search for a North American gem mine, along a fabled path that had defied 16th-century explorers, Wild West prospectors, and modern geologists. They are an unlikely pair: Chuck Fipke, a ragged, stuttering fellow with a singular talent for finding sand-size mineral grains, and Stew Blusson, an ultra-tough geologist and helicopter pilot. Inventive, eccentric and ruthless, they follow a trail of geologic clues left by predecessors all the way from backwoods Arkansas up the glaciated high Rockies into the vast and haunted "barren lands" of northern Canada. With a South African geochemist's "secret weapon," Fipke and Blusson outwit rivals, including the immense De Beers carte, and make one of the world's greatest diamond discoveries- setting off a stampede unseen since the Klondike gold rush.
A story of obsession and scientific intrigue, Barren Lands is also an elegy to one of earth's last great wild places, a starkly beautiful and mysterious land strewn with pure lakes and alive with wolves and caribou. An endless variety of primeval glacial rock formations hide copper, zinc, and gold, in addition to diamonds. Now that the barrens are "open for business," what will happen to this great wilderness region?
Barren Lands is an unforgettable journey for those who, in the words of a nineteenth-century trapper, "want to see that country before it is all gone."
Review
"This tale of avarice and ambition-every word of it is true-has never been
told so dramatically, or with such scrupulous attention to detail."
Stefan Kanfer, author of The Last Empire: DeBeers, Diamonds and the World
Review
"Barren Lands is a brilliant, lucid, and, in parts, sensational
investigation." Edward Jay Epstein, author of Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer and The Rise and Fall of Diamonds
Review
"Not since John McPhee has a writer made me care so much about the men who
care for rocks. There is an intense joy in watching a writer successfully
work such a vast multitude of thread. Barren Lands is bursting with life.
breathtaking." Marc Zabludoff, former editor of Discover magazine
Review
"A true adventure story, with secrets, spies, attempted murder, mysterious
fires, plane crashes, and feats of daring and courage. Fascinating,
fast-paced, and enormously enjoyable." Richard A.F. Grieve, chief geoscientist, Natural Resources Canada
Review
"Krajick, a journalist who reported on the Barren Lands diamond rush for Discover magazine, is a smooth storyteller with a novelist's ear for dialogue. But these aren't flamboyant fictional characters living out madeup lives; they're real people, and this is what really happened to them. A can't-miss for fans of reallife adventure." Booklist
Review
"Magazine writer Krajick (Natural History, Newsweek) leaves few stones unturned as he presents not only a "diamond rush" in Canada's Northwest Territories during the 1990s but a history of one man's pursuit of this gem....A combination of arctic climate, corporate spies, and inexact geologic science, mixed with human greed, grizzlies, and prodigious amounts of insects and alcohol, turns the last half of Barren Lands into a suspenseful thriller." Library Journal
Synopsis
Barren Lands is the true story of the centuries-long hunt for the great
North American diamond mine, and the two small-time prospectors who
risked their lives from the 1970s to the 1990s to find it, from rural Arkansas
to the far Canadian tundra the last wild frontier.
About the Author
Kevin Krajick is a prizewinning journalist whose articles have appeared in
National Geographic, Newsweek, The New York Times, Science, Discover, Audubon, Smithsonian and many other publications. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Public Service and won the American Geophysical Union's 1998 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism. He lives in New York City.