Wardini Book Review: Wanderlust by Reid Mitenbuler (Harper Collins, $39.99)

Louise Ward from Wardini Books reviews Reid Mitenbuler’s page-turning adventure of a biography, 'Wanderlust'.

Do you judge a book by its cover? I did when I saw this one. It screams story, and there are some doozies in this 438-page tome.

The giant on the cover is Danish adventurer Peter Freuchen, and this is the story of his most perilous shenanigans.

As a young man he studied medicine, abandoning his course in 1906 to sail to Greenland aboard the Hans Egede as a stoker, shovelling coal into the ship’s furnace and proving himself to be strong, reliable and adaptable.

His burning curiosity and burgeoning passion for the Artic saw him given greater roles and responsibilities, and his career as an explorer was launched.

“‘Don’t mess around with the local women’, the captain of the Hans Egede told his crew before granting them shore leave.”

With the Inuit having a different set of values to Europeans, this advice was rarely heeded and Freuchen messed about quite a bit, eventually marrying an Inuit woman, Navarana.

The story of their marriage (Freuchen’s first of three) is a fascinating one involving children, long separations and a way of conducting a relationship quite alien to many other cultures.

Freuchen’s story is one of skills learned through hard experience and restlessness that saw him teaming up with his friend and business partner Knud Rasmussen on further expeditions to explore and map Greenland.

The pace of the author’s storytelling lends an edge-of-your-seat experience. The reader is drawn into mortal danger many times as Freuchen fearlessly dives headlong out of Greenland and into two world wars, in which he will play a fascinating part.

Freuchen was, among other things, a novelist who ended up in Hollywood during its ‘golden age’, consulting on films, writing scripts, living in the same building as Marilyn Monroe and nearly ruining Jean Harlow’s career.

It’s the stuff of wild dreams - incredible that one man lived it all. I found myself very attached to Peter Freuchen, his life and his family, invested in every step of his exciting life.

Wanderlust details a larger-than-life man, some of his deeds glorious, some less so. The author presents you with a story of a life, warts and all, lived according to Freuchen’s own terms and moral code. It’s intriguing, inspiring and beautifully told.