“Ice to Water”
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By M Jackson; Torrey House Press, 2024; 296 pages; $18.95.
M Jackson, a geographer and glaciologist who lives in Oregon, has written two previous nonfiction books, including “The Secret Lives of Glaciers.” She’s now applied to fiction her extensive knowledge of glaciers and her commitment to addressing the dangers of climate change.
“Ice to Water” features a woman who lives next to a glacier in the fictional town of Burnt Bay, Alaska, a short ferry ride from Juneau. Ruth is originally from Iceland and has been living on a farm that has been in her husband’s family ownership for generations. Recently widowed, she’s learned that her husband had put them into tremendous debt and that the bank is planning to foreclose on the property. The property line includes the entire glacier, which provides the town’s fresh water.
One might think that hundreds of acres of farmland and a town’s water supply would have plenty of value, but Ruth believes she’ll be evicted and lose everything. In addition, there are questions about her husband’s recent death, and she fears she’s likely to go to jail for his murder.
When a mysterious stranger appears, Ruth hikes with him to the glacier, where they discover an ice cave. Ruth posts pictures of the cave on social media, giving its location, and tourists immediately show up to see it. Very quickly, she’s in the tourism business, giving tours twice a day and bringing economic prosperity to the one-rental-car town. Meanwhile, fall slides into winter, there’s no snow, and wildfires are burning closer and filling the air with smoke and ash.
Jackson is at her best describing glacial features. Here’s the ice cave as Ruth experiences it: “The ice above was turquoise, scalloping in repeating one-foot by one-foot sections. The ice at eye level farther back in the cave was darker, almost a black blue, and when she looked at her hands it was as if her pale white Icelandic skin had taken on blue dye. It was murky, dreamlike, blue.”
Ruth very soon comes to understand that she needs to learn about glaciers and glacier safety and teams up with a Juneau glaciologist to both learn and help with scientific studies. They travel on the glacier, where Ruth falls into a crevasse and is rescued. Here, Jackson expands on glacial features and dynamics: “It was the movement of melting surface water that created huge cavities inside the ice. Ruth understood now how moving water on the surface gathered in rivulets and carved paths and pools and tunnels of blue-blue water.”
Aside from her fall into a crevasse, Ruth lives in survival mode in multiple ways. Between the stress of trying to save her land and being investigated for her husband’s death, she has taken to drinking in a major way. She is drinking and/or drunk on just about every page of the novel.
Who is the mysterious man? He comes and goes, offering love, support, and encouragement to Ruth, who’s both needy and disagreeable in her relationship with him and with all the townspeople. The lesbian couple who live nearby, the visiting glaciologist, and Ruth’s cute dog are remarkably forgiving of her transgressions and self-inflicted injuries.
As a character, Ruth is largely inscrutable. Primary characteristics are her tendencies to constantly inventory things and to witness the actions of inanimate objects. When she stabs a pillow and releases its feathers (out of her rage at certain memories) she observes, “There were six general types of feathers: contour, flight, down, filoplume, semiplume, and bristle. The feather in her hand was down.” Elsewhere, stacks of books in her home laugh at her, “their spines curved up in mocking grins.” A dark rain cloud enters a building, where “Ruth watched the cloud close its eyes, sigh, then release all its rain down onto them.” It’s unclear whether Ruth is neurodivergent, is suffering from a mental breakdown and psychosis, is black-out drunk — or whether magical things actually happen around her.
As the novel progresses it seems that Ruth’s reluctance to deal with her circumstances is a metaphor for humanity’s reluctance to address the clear dangers of climate change. “The ice could only come back, could only surmount loss, if no one looked away ... What would happen if she looked hard at herself for once, if she opened a door of memories and finally faced it? If she stopped pushing everything away? Avoiding? Denying?”
It doesn’t give away too much to say that Ruth eventually realizes the need to love herself — and that the same goes for loving the world. One protects what one loves, whether that’s one’s own sanity, one’s friends, the beauty and life-giving water of glaciers, or a livable world.
As the glaciologist says, “Loss is not a permanent state, Ruth. Loss is not a destination, not a place. Loss is just a phase change. That’s all. Ice to water.”
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