True North: A Novel of Matthew Alexander Henson

40 degrees 49 minutes North. Harlem. Two degrees above where he began.

Book Five of The Compass and the Crucible, and the volume the other four were waiting for. It took the country forty-five years to answer him. This is the answer, and the waiting, and which weighed more.

After the Pole: a customs house in New York and a messenger's wage. The man who stood at ninety degrees north, clocking in and out of a federal building for twenty-three years while the commander lectured and collected medals.He publishes a book in 1912 and it goes quiet. He is not invited to the dinners. He is not in the photographs that get printed. Harlem grows up around him, and the people there know exactly who he is even when the country does not.

Then, slowly, the record turns. The Explorers Club admits him. Congress strikes a medal. A president receives him at the White House when he is an old man in a borrowed suit.

Forty-five years between the Pole and the handshake. This volume is about what a man does with that interval, and what it does to him.

Forty-three chapters, the longest volume in the series. Narrative history in Henson's own voice, anchored to the documented record.

Concludes The Compass and the Crucible. Delivered as EPUB. No DRM.