A review by bmwpalmer
81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska's Frozen Wilderness by Toula Vlahou

3.0

Good, but not great. A book about such an amazing story of survival should have been better than this. As it was, I think source material was thin, so the author had to grasp a little. It's funny, because the book I read just before this one was always taking pleasant side-trips into peripheral characters or events, and I really enjoyed it. But this book's side-trips took away from the strength and momentum of the main story. It reminded me of Victor Hugo - in [b:Les Misérables|24280|Les Misérables|Victor Hugo|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1411852091s/24280.jpg|3208463], for example, if a character passes, say, a well, then we get a hundred pages about that well and how it came to be there. Much of the same is going on in this book, and it drags down the whole story.