The Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell

Published to acclaim in Europe, Kitty Sewell’s Ice Trap is at heart a romance. A romance between people, about the great Canadian north and the author’s with her protagonist.

The cover says it is a novel of suspense and there is some suspense. The impossibly handsome, impossibly good hero has found himself the father of twins from a long ago liaison, one he didn’t remember having and is sure is a mistake. Dr. Dafydd Woodruff, now ensconced in Cardiff Wales, has been trying for years to have a child with his wife. He is contacted by a girl purporting to be his daughter, conceived during a self-imposed exile to the Arctic a dozen years ago.

A young surgeon, starting out, he’d made a huge mistake. He’d taken the wrong organ from a dying child. He fled to the Canadian sub-arctic to try to do penance. He’d met and made friends and enemies there, chief of the latter is the head nurse of the hospital where he worked, Sheila Hailey. Hailey was a beautiful woman but controlling, vindictive, and hateful. Woodruff had never liked her nor trusted her so finding out that she was the mother of his twins was shocking. There had never been anything between them. But DNA doesn’t lie. How can this be?

Dafydd Woodruff is not a man without faults by any means. He had injured a child and during the story, he drives his motorcycle drunk, earning himself an opportunity to go back to Canada to find the truth. He is a very good man, though. He’s faithful husband until his wife leaves him, he is incredibly loyal to his druggie friend Ian and to his putative children. He even makes sure to use a condom in a brief interlude with a lovely, talented indigenous woman named Uyarasuq during his first visit. I grew a bit impatient with him, waiting for him to break out of the saint mode. Sewell however seemed delighted with her character.

I expect readers will figure out the mystery before Dafydd but the story is well told, the scenery interesting and most of the characters well-limned and appealing. Sheila Hailey is as impossibly bad as Dafydd is good but they make for a lovely chiaroscuro for the sub-Arctic and the rest of the characters to play against. In any event, it is a fine way to while away a few hours on a chilly winter evening.

~mel