Authors at Home: Erica Ferencik; “Girl in Ice”

Erica Ferencik writes from what she knows and where she ventures. An adventure traveler and writer, she immerses herself in the settings of her stories to bring readers right into the landscape. From remote jungles, desolate forests, Amazon rivers, or the Arctic Circle, she goes where her stories take her, making for intense and extremely satisfying thrillers. Her latest book, Girl in Ice, was published in March by Gallery/Scout and has received rave reviews. We asked Erica what she’s working on and what she would do if she couldn’t write. Here’s what she had to say:

What are you currently reading, watching, listening to? Anything you wholly recommend as being inspiring, uplifting or just really fun?

Not sure about the “uplifting” category but here goes:

Reading and loving:

A Natural History of the Future, by Rob Dunn, which blew my mind with its view of exactly what will befall this earth if we continue on our current path of self-destruction.

I haven’t read Hernan Diaz’s new book, Trust, yet, but I pre-ordered it and can’t wait to get my hands on it after devouring the strange and gorgeous In the Distance.

Machines Like Me, Ian McKuen. Loved it: every page crackles with intelligence and eeriness.

The Push, Ashley Audrain. Terrifying rethink of the Bad Seed trope. Dee-licious.

Reaching back a bit, I re-read: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Still a heartbreaking classic that has lost none of its power over time.

Watching and loving: The Flight Attendant, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, A Story of Folk Horror, Don’t Look Now, Enduring Love, The Triplets of Belleville.

Can you take us through the day in the life of Erica Ferencik? What’s your day-to-day routine like — when you’re writing a book, and when you’re not?

Mornings are spent “taking care of business” — errands, emails, exercise, you name it, life stuff. I settle down in my studio — a very simple, small rehabbed shed behind my house — at around three pm. I bring my dinner in there and work till nine o’clock five or six nights a week; seven when I’m behind or on some crazy deadline.

It’s a really basic place — and I need it that way. No decorations, just a lamp, desk and chair, and a coffeepot. :) The shed — which has one big window — looks out over the woods behind our property. I’m so grateful to have this place. All sorts of animals have dropped by to see me as I work and as dusk comes on: deer, rabbits, coyotes, skunks, owls, porcupines, and I’m delighted to see them all.

Where did you draw inspiration to create the young frozen girl in Girl in Ice? How did she come to you in your mind? Fully formed, or just as an idea? Can you tell us how she came to be?

One bitterly cold morning in the winter of 2018, I was walking in the woods near my home, and came upon what looked like juvenile painted turtles frozen mid-stroke in the ice along the shallow edge of a pond. They didn’t look alive, but they didn’t look dead either.

It turns out there are some animals (and plants too!) that have this freezing-and-coming-back-to-life thing down. Painted turtle hatchlings, some species of beetle, wood frogs, certain alligators, even an adorable one-millimeter length creature called a Tardigrade or “water bear” that can be frozen to -359C and thaw out just fine. Most of these creatures possess a certain cryo-protein that protects their cells from bursting when they freeze.

A protein that…we don’t possess. Still, the image of a young girl frozen in a glacier in the Arctic popped into my head. I saw just her foot, from the side, as if she were running away from something. From there, I asked myself: How did she get there? What was her story?

From this initial inspiration, I teased out my story, all the while reading everything I could get my hands about Greenland, its people, landscape and history. I spent four months creating an outline, many more months writing a first draft, and it was only at that time did I plan my research trip to Greenland.

We’re hoping that you are working on another book — are you able to share what’s next?

The novel I’m working on now is a little under wraps at the moment, but I can tell you that it’s an eco-thriller, called The Intelligence, that poses the question: what happens when nature strikes back at humankind’s attempts to destroy it?

The protagonist must somehow answer a second question: how do you defeat an enemy you desperately need for your own survival.

If you weren’t writing books right now, what would you be doing?

I’m miserable if I don’t have a creative outlet, so I might be taking a lot more dance classes, go back to sewing, or maybe even painting (I started out as a fine artist). I might even actually really really clean my house.

What three to five words best describe Girl in Ice?

Propulsive, thrilling, original, intense, powerful.

You have traveled extensively and do so for every book you write. Where are the next places you’d like to go and write about?

To be clear — for me — the human story comes first, not the setting. That said, my settings have served almost as characters in my books, which is why I’ve traveled to these places and embedded myself there: I need to get all the feels of the place in order to bring it alive on the page for the reader. For my next novel, The Intelligence, I spent time in the wilds of Eastern Oregon.

In a follow-up question, is there anywhere you will NOT go?

I’m open to any place on earth my story demands I go, except…

As much as I’d love to set a story on a ship on the ocean, I have such a deep respect for the dangers of the open sea (storms especially terrify me) that I don’t think I could bring myself to spend a lot of time out there. I also get seasick just thinking about it! :) I don’t think I’d relish going into space either. Caves freak me out as well. Guess there are several places I won’t go, now that I think about it! :)

If you couldn’t write or travel, what would you be doing?

If I couldn’t write, hopefully I’d be as obsessed and in love with whatever other profession I’d chosen, and it would have to be something in the arts. I started out pre-med, but quickly abandoned that because I think — at the time I was pursuing it — I was just too immature to handle the demands.

What is one big message you want readers to take away from Girl in Ice?

I’d love them to take away not so much a message, but a feeling. The world feels over-explored, every corner feels exploited, but the fact remains that there is more on this earth that we don’t know than what we do. Profound mysteries remain, especially in the natural world. So — beyond being taken on a wild ride, being magnificently entertained — I’d love for readers to experience a feeling of absolute awe at the wonders that remain, the mysteries that still exist all around us, in plain sight.

Book Summary:

From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has been thawed from the ice alive.

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable — and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­ — a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands — Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey — led by the unlikeliest of guides — to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

About Erica Ferencik:

There is nowhere on earth Erica Ferencik won’t go to take you out of your head and into the great wild world. An award-winning novelist, Ferencik writes adventure novels featuring women who brave not only internal struggles but face extreme challenges in their environment: remote forests, steaming jungles, and desolated icescapes.

To research The River at Night, Into the Jungle, and her upcoming thriller GIRL IN ICE, which Scout Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will publish in March 2022, she ventured deep into the remote forests of the Allagash Territory in Northern Maine, rafted the Amazon River in the jungles of Peru, and explored the desolate iceberg-packed fjords of Greenland.

Erica says, “The research was fun but not always easy. For much of the time, I felt some level of apprehension. I had to develop ways of dealing with it just to get on the little prop plane, the dugout canoe, the helicopter, you name it, but my desire to research the books — bring the reader the real sights, sounds, smells, the real feels of a place — always trumped my fear. My passion is to create unputdownable novels set in some of the most inhospitable regions on earth, places most of us don’t get a chance to experience in person in our lifetimes.”

Erica Ferencik considers her MA in Creative Writing from Boston University just the beginning of her literary education. Her thirty-five years of writing — novels, short stories, essays, ghostwriting, ten years of standup and sketch comedy, as well as dozens of screenplays, and a brief filmmaking stint — was her boots-on-the-ground training. Her work has appeared in Salon and the Boston Globe, as well as on National Public Radio.

She says, “I was raised in the wilds of upstate New York during the era when — rightly or wrongly — you could take off after school to explore and no one worried, as long as you were home by dark. Now, I live in MetroWest Boston with my very tolerant husband and frankly enormous Maine Coon cat. I am in love with my family and friends, the startling beauty of the natural world, and the wonders that lay half hidden in everyday life.

Connect with Erica:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Read more Authors at Home:

Elle Marr: Strangers We Know
Lara Elena Donnelly: Base Notes
Yasmin Angoe: Her Name is Knight
Lynne Reeves: The Dangers of an Ordinary Night
Gabrielle St. George: How to Murder a Marriage
Cai Emmons: Sinking Islands
Emily Giffin: The Lies that Bind
Jeanette Escudero: The Apology Project