THE RIFLES

Volume Six of Vollmann's vast, timeless epic Seven Dreams, this third novel (after Fathers and Crows, 1992) in the series takes up as its primary theme the lost 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin to the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. As with any of this yarnspinner's weavings, however, temporal boundaries have been overcome; along with a close account of Franklin and his command suffering through several winters in the frozen North, slowly and painfully poisoned by lead in their canned provisions and finally locked in ice so that they had to abandon their ships and starve on a hopeless trek to civilization, are tales of forced Inuit relocations in the 1950's and the historical erosion of Inuit culture—starting with the introduction of rifles by early explorers and ending with rampant gasoline sniffing and other abuses in substandard settlements provided by the Canadian government. Through his own liaison, Captain Subzero, a modern-day reincarnation of Franklin, becomes linked with the ghost of the explorer's Inuit mistress from an earlier expedition—a bond that gives him license to view Franklin's ill-fated journey firsthand. Subzero exists in another form as well, as the author's alter-ego, and part of the chronicle involves a harrowing description of Vollmann's 12 days on ice, at an abandoned weather station far north of the Arctic Circle, where poor judgment and inferior equipment nearly brought him to a literal reenactment of Franklin's fate. Bleak icy vistas vie with evidence of human desolation at every turn in this restless, chilling saga—less monumental than its predecessors, perhaps, but every bit as challenging.