Edinger, Ray

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EDINGER, Ray

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—Rochester, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Penguin Group, Berkley Books Publicity, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Journalist, writer, and bibliophile.

MEMBER: Bibliophile Society of Rochester (NY; president; delegate to Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies).

WRITINGS:

Fury Beach: The Four-Year Odyssey of Captain John Ross and the Victory, Berkley Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to Mercator's World magazine.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A nonfiction book about American explorer Elisha Kent Kane, who made two trips to the Arctic in the 1850s.

SIDELIGHTS: An expert on polar exploration, Ray Edinger has written numerous articles for the magazine Mercator's World. An ardent bibliophile who has amassed a large collection of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century books on Arctic exploration, Edinger draws on his expertise as well as his personal library in Fury Beach: The Four-Year Odyssey of Captain John Ross and the Victory.

Scottish seaman John Ross, "a complex and stubborn sea dog," as Raymond Puffer noted in Kliatt, was one of scores of lesser-known Arctic explorers searching for the fabled Northwest Passage during the exploration of the North American continent. On the outs after an unsuccessful Arctic exploration in 1819, Ross mounted a privately funded expedition in 1829 aboard a converted steamship, the Victory, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, a route trading companies presumed would reduce the time and cost of transporting trade goods. Planned to last twelve months, his odyssey stretched to four years after the Victory became marooned near the Arctic Circle. Ross and his crew survived because of help from the local Inuit, whom the stranded sailors befriended. The three extra years were not a total waste: Ross's nephew mounted an expedition that located the position of the magnetic North Pole before Ross and his men finally made their way to Baffin Bay by whaleboat.

Edinger, whose book collection contains original writings by Ross, became intrigued by his subject after reading several contradictory reports about the Scot's achievements, character, and literary style. Fury Beach is, consequently, a "labor of love," according to Booklist reviewer Roland Green, and Ross himself "emerges as an irresistibly likeable as well as gallant figure." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found Edinger's book to be a "nonintrusive, if not particularly stylish, narrative that ably reveals the stubborn Captain Ross as the key to survival against the odds," while for Puffer, "Edinger's enthusiasm and knowledge shine through the pages and make for reading that is lively as well as accurate."