My Last Continent

It is only at the end of the world—among the glacier mountains and frigid waters of Antarctica—where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in each other.

But Antarctica, like their fleeting romance, is tenuous, imperilled by the world to the north. A new travel and research season has just begun, and Deb and Keller are ready to play tour guide to the passengers on the small expedition ship that ferries them to their research destination. Except that this year, Keller fails to appear on board. Shortly into the trip, Deb's ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters. And among the crew of the sinking ship is Keller...

As Deb and Keller's troubled histories collide with this catastrophic present, Deb's role turns from researcher to rescuer—all too aware that in this land of harsh beauty even the smallest missteps can have tragic consequences.

My Last Continent is described as 'half adventure, half elegy, and wholly recommended' by Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. M. L. Steadman, author of The Light Between Oceans, praises it as 'refreshingly different, vivid and immediate. Midge Raymond has an extraordinary gift for description that puts the reader bang in the middle of the action, bang in the middle of its dangerous and endangered world. Her clean, sparse prose pulls us irresistibly into the story and the wider issues it raises. She is clearly a writer in command of her craft.'

Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, calls it 'an original and entirely authentic love story... It recognises that love is seldom simple or exclusive, and that the things that bring us together can also keep us apart.'

The quality of Raymond's prose is noted from the opening lines: 'An uncompromising, multi-layered story of love and admiration—of people, animals, and environment—in which authenticity and beauty is born from their imperfections. Vivid and emotionally astute, both heartrending and hopeful, Midge Raymond's My Last Continent is a novel I recommend without reservation.'

This novel was mentioned in the Top 10 International Reads of 2016 by Booklover Book Reviews.