Book Promo ~ Journey Through Fire and Ice

This is No Fairy Tale:
Newlyweds Face Happiness and Heartache During Alaskan Adventure

Journey Through Fire and Ice: Shattered Dreams Above the Arctic Circle is Deanne’s unforgettable memoir that gives new life to vivid memories that at one time she had hoped would fade.

It all began in the summer of 1964, when, at the age of 23, Deanne accompanied Tiger to the Inuit village of Kivalina, Alaska, a barrier island 23 miles above the Arctic Circle. Tiger was conducting a study of the natives, but Deanne, a naïve city girl, was completely unprepared for what she was about to experience.

In Kivalina, she lived on the edge of two worlds — the one she left behind and the one where she reluctantly participated in all aspects of the women’s lives. Skinning seals, cleaning and drying fish, and cutting beluga and caribou to store became her way of life. Plumbing, running water and electricity were not available. Loneliness was a constant companion until a few women befriended her.

During a span of six days, Deanne and Tiger narrowly escaped death during a camping trip, and Tiger suffered severe burns from a fire in their house. He spent three months in the hospital receiving treatment for seared lungs and horrific burns on his face and hands. His lungs never recovered from this ordeal.

When he was finally released from the hospital, he returned to the village with Deanne to complete the study. The life-threatening and harrowing experiences in Alaska transformed Deanne into a woman of strength who learned how to embrace challenge.

Over 50 years later, she remembers that young girl who left on an unknown journey that will live in her heart forever.

Author Deanne Burch was born and raised in Canada and attended the University of Toronto, obtaining B.A. degrees in liberal arts and social work. After the Alaska journey, she and her husband eventually settled in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where they lived until his death.

Deanne spent 30 years as a professional international photographer who taught and lectured in the U.S. and Canada. She published several articles in photography magazines and journals. Since retiring in 2014, she devoted herself to writing short stories and children’s stories. Journey Through Fire and Ice: Shattered Dreams Above the Arctic Circle was published in March 2021.

For more information, please visit www.Deanneburch.com, or follow her on Facebook at @DeanneBurchAuthor.

CUSTOMER REVIEW:
Heart Warming Real Life Adventure: What an amazing tale of confidence building in a completely unfamiliar culture in the Arctic on an island among native people of the north as a newly wed! The author speaks to the reader as if she were relating her adventures and feelings face to face. ~ PAgardener67

Journey Through Fire and Ice: Shattered Dreams Above the Arctic Circle

Publisher: Authority Publishing
ISBN-10: ‏1949642593
ISBN-13: ‎978-1949642599

Available from
Amazon.com
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Can do attitude for youth

Summer Programs Instill A Can-Do Attitude
In Disadvantaged Youth

By Linda Mornell
Founder of Summer Search

How do we create grit in our kids? I read recently that character development is now considered as important if not more so than learning the hard skills like reading and math. But how can we as parents teach character development… especially grit?

Years ago, long before someone invented the term helicopter parenting, my husband and I sent our children to summer programs away from home. These were traditional camps where they lived with a group of new kids and learned to deal with problems on their own. Then after their freshman year of high school, each one participated in a three-week mountaineering and white-water rafting trip in Oregon with Outward Bound.

Our middle daughter was sensitive, with an artistic side. Sandwiched between two athletic and competitive siblings, she had learned early on to say, “I can’t,” and to give in to her many fears: heights, the dark and extending herself athletically. The idea of doing any kind of wilderness program was anathema to her. We told her she had a choice: she could go voluntarily or involuntarily.

 She chose to go involuntarily. I still remember that angry silent drive to the airport.

When she returned home she had a new name, “Sara Can!”

Those rigorous adventures had the intended effect, which in those days I called, “going for hard.” Today the word is grit. By making hard choices in places where no one knew them, my children had the chance to stretch themselves and experiment with different identities, and build self-efficacy — the belief in their ability to succeed in challenging situations. Children with self-efficacy move toward challenges rather than away from them. They lean in.

Because these programs were so instrumental in helping my children find their voices and embark on successful paths, I started Summer Search, a non-profit that provides similar opportunities to low-income high school students. We give ongoing mentoring and two full scholarships for our kids to participate in summer programs. The first, some kind of wilderness expedition after their sophomore year and the second, a family home stay abroad, community service, or academic experience on a college campus after their junior year.

Twenty-five years later, thousands of adolescents have been willing to take the risk of leaving home, and like Sara Can, expose themselves to the unknown and to be miserable. To be wet and cold all night, struggle with bruises, strange bug bites and to never quit. And they participate with kids from affluent families who, to their surprise, are not that much different. Everyone smells the same after the first week.

They return home more resilient and more self-assured as they too have learned that they can – that they are, indeed, strong enough to do anything.

About Linda Mornell

Linda Mornell is the founder of Summer Search (www.summersearch.org), a nonprofit organization that provides disadvantaged young people with life-changing and challenging summer opportunities. She is also the author of the book “Forever Changed: How Summer Programs and Insight Mentoring Challenge Adolescents and Transform Lives.” Mornell was born on a farm in Muncie, Ind. After getting her RN and bachelor’s degrees from Methodist Hospital and DePauw University, she headed west on a Greyhound bus. She received psychiatric training from Langley Porter at the University of California in San Francisco and married a psychiatric resident, Pierre Mornell. She has three adult children and seven grandchildren. Mornell divides her time among family, writing and consulting. In 2014, she was blessed by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama for her efforts to empower disadvantaged youth.