Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A haunting portrait of friends lost and friendship found
A deeply moving misadventure. In getting lost, these three men discovered the soul of Labrador as well as the true meaning of friendship and survival. This book is a classic.

The lure of the Labrador wild
I have read this book several times, and would recomend it to anyone that enjoys an adventure story. I enjoy it even more than most as Leonidas Hubbard was my grandfathers first cousin.This book has been almost required reading in our family,(Hubbard).I hope the publisher will reprint it as we have many family members looking for a copy of the book.

Tired..Weak..Hungry..They fought until the end.Ive been ther
I have read a lot of teen adventure books. I recently read this one while I was on a rugged boys canoe camp trip. We went on a 7 week trip with 12 men to labrador. I purchased this bookbecause it was nonfiction and it was saying how these 3 brave, adventurousmen took a trip similar to the area i'll be going to. It talked about howmothernature just (threre's really no word for it but...)Destroys thesepeople and they fight back with courage and hope in succeeding this rawadventure. The three in progress of there adventure take care of eachother and keep eachother alive nad in this doing they become better than greatfriends almost brothers. I really don't want to ruin the book for you, buti suggest so strongly that you get a copy of this book, and oh yea thebeginning of the bookreally is boring because it tells you of how theygot to labrador in 1902 (they didn't have cars).

Thank God the author lived and his book is being reprinted!
I cannot say enough about the content and the form of this book.Itbeautifully informs the reader not only of the enthusiasm of two would-bewilderness pioneers, but also of the errors they did not know they had madealong the way to a tragic end.I get the feeling that the author, whowrote the book (according to the introduction) as a tribute to his lostmate, never overlooks or overplays any of the events that took place in thethen-unchartered terrain of eastern Laborador.The author also makes plainthat the voyage ended his youthful naivete by teaching him the necessity ofrespecting the natural world and of remembering our loves who slowly butsurely disappear from our lives.

In short, Lure Of the Laborador Wild,despite its drab title, is an engrossing work.It is quiet, clearlywritten and, in a matter-of-fact way, terrifying.It towers far above allother nonfiction adventure books I have read over the past ten years.

A true story of courage and friendship
Poorly prepared, two friends, and their half-indian manservant "George", decide to travel deep in to the interior of Labrador.The hardship they endure and the hard choices they make are a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit. This book gives great insight into what life was like in eastern Canada at the turn of this century. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Where the heck are they?
A wonderful book, very readable and absorbing.The strength and courage of these three men is inspiring and can only be imagined.E.g., making a 40 mile portage, half starving, carrying a canoe and several hundred pounds of supplies and equipment, or having to wade across a river (up to their armpits) that was encrusted with ice along its banks and having their now-wet clothes start to freeze on their bodies while they try to build a fire.However, the 3-star rating is not because of the writing or the adventure:this version (Lyon Press, 2004) has no maps and no photos.Photos would have added another dimension to understanding the spartan hardships of such an adventure, not to mention conveying the author's meanings of barren, difficult, or heart-breaking - all of which I thought were understated.And oddly enough, these photos are readily available - a google search will locate many, and the Canadian Virtual Museum has 67.The photos along with the text would have added substantial impact to the question, "How could they have endured this?"

But the lack of a map is intolerable.Maps are referenced half a dozen times by Wallace in the first half a dozen pages: their inaccuracies, their incompleteness, and the details his map now provides.Since a major navigational failing of the expedition is due to an inaccurate map from the Canadian Geological Survey (circa 1896 - and also available online via the CGS website), its absence is unforgivable.Another CGS map that got Hubbard so excited because "Unexplored Territory" was written across northern Labrador is another "must have" exhibit.Without a map, the reader has no idea where these men started, where they wanted to go, where they got lost or how they returned, or can understand the sad realization that a dream predicted an accurate route to safety but was ignored.

I spent more time online looking up maps of Labrador, trying to find the various missteps of the explorers (e.g., the Nascaupee, Susan, and Beaver Rivers) than I did reading the book.If you don't want to get lost reading this incredible adventure, then buy a version of this book that contains maps.I found this version of the book very frustrating.

A truly sincere classic
I couldn't put this book down once I started and really enjoyed the read. It has a place on my shelf of classics and just a very real story that is captured extremely well in words.

And I thought the Boundary Waters was tough
I'm ordering a second copy to give to my fellow canoers who head for the boundary waters canoe area wilderness. We travel with up to date equipment and maps. The fellows in this book "winged" it with what was then state-of-the-art gear. This book is a great contrast between wilderness canoe travel from this century to the last century.
The account is truly chilling at times. You are tempted to exclaim "these guys must have been nuts!!" But their journey was truly an adventure. Few of us would have the stones to attempt this today.
If you do any form of wilderness trekking or canoeing, you will really like this book. ... Read more

Amazon.com
In 1903 Leonidas Hubbard set out to cross the Ungava-Labrador Peninsula, and to forge a name for himself as an adventure writer. He took a friend, a guide, a canoe, a ton of equipment, and scads of naive hope. Months later, the friend and guide staggered out of the snow, and Hubbard starved to death in his tent, too weak to attempt the 30-mile trek to safety. And that's just Part I. James West Davidson and John Rugge narrate with simple dignity, making vividly tangible the wretchedness of mosquitoes, the panic of no food, and the rocky tangle of the Labrador wilderness.Book Description
In 1903 Leonidas Hubbard was commissioned by an outdoors magazine to explore Labrador by canoe.Joined by his best friend, Dillon Wallace, and a Scots-Cree guide, George Elson, Hubbard hoped to make a name for himself as an adventurer.But plagued by poor judgment and bad luck, his party
turned back and Hubbard died of starvation just thirty miles from camp.Two years later, Hubbard's widow, Mina, and Wallace returned to Labrador, leading rival expeditions to complete the original trek and fix blame for the earlier failure.Their race made headlines from New York to Nova
Scotia-and it makes fascinating reading today in this widely acclaimed reconstruction of the epic saga.The authors draw on contemporary accounts and their own journeys in Labrador to evoke the intense drama to men and women pushed beyond the limits of endurance in one of the great true adventures
of our century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

S.K. Lapius
This is a great read. There is little written about this turn of the century, "last frontier" of North America where even today natives will tell you that you can't get there from here. The grueling hardship and trajedy are well portrayed - as are the portraits of each individual. It truly takes the 3 books written about this seminal journey and adds information from the diaries and other writings of the various figures involved; and, this is artfully done by shifting voices. The book flows well and holds suspense to a surprising degree even to those who know the eventual outcome.

Good adventure story
This book tells the story of two expeditions across Labrador. The first took place in 1903 by three men, on which one of them, Leonidas Hubbard, died. Three years later, his wife, Mina, made the same journey successfully. These accounts are well written and make good use of the original journals.

Annoying novelistic style
As you can see from other reviews, most people seem to really like this book. I, however, got a few pages in and found I had no use for it, even though I generally go for just this sort of story. The authors of "Great Heart" use a novelistic narrative style, filling in from their imagination all manner of little details that they obviously could have no way of knowing. I'm apparently enough of a purist that I want my narratives based on reliable source material, not imagination. When an author begins to fictionalize, how can one ever know where the boundary between fact and fiction lies? This doesn't seem to have bothered most of the reviewers, but you might want to stay away from the book if you're similarly picky.

Great book
Excellent read - hard to put it down.

A First Rate Wilderness Adventure with a Twist!
This is a fabulous narrative of a wilderness adventure, like many others filled with the hazards adventurers encounter when they stray far from home.What makes the story unique is not a side-bar intrigue of romance and mystery but a deep underlying question about human motivation, relationships and dreams - as lived through the minds and bodies of the adventurous.The story is told with skill and grace - and is spellbinding. ... Read more