Ice Brothers by Wilson, Sloan - 1979

New York: Arbor House, 1979. Hardbound . Book Club Edition. BINDING/CONDITION: blue boards with red at the spine; a Very Good+ book, with a Very Good- dust jacket. Dust jacket by Paul Bacon. A microcosm of World War II as shown in a Greenland patrol boat and the crew of a Coast Guard ice trawler. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Paul Schuman, a college senior and summer sailor, enlists in the Coast Guard. His active duty begins when, without a day of training, he is assigned to be the executive officer aboard the Arluk, a converted fishing trawler patrolling the coast of Greenland for secret German weather bases. The Arluk is captained by 'Mad' Mowry, the finest ice pilot and meanest drunk in the Coast Guard. Schuman needs to learn quickly how to deal with deadly icebergs, dangerous blizzards, and menacing Nazi gunboats along the frigid Arctic coastline. Author Sloan Wilson captained a charter boat in Boston at the age of 18 and during World War II commanded three ships of the U.S. Coast Guard. Both his grandfather and his uncle were navigators of Arctic expeditions, and his own experience on the Greenland Patrol early in World War II form the basis of this book. 8vo (8.5 inches tall) 502 pages.