Twinned tales of exploration

KEN MCGOOGAN

GOD'S MERCIESRivalry, Betrayaland the Dream of DiscoveryBy Douglas HunterDoubleday, 401 pages, $34.95The centuries-long quest for a navigable Northwest Passage spawned numerous catastrophes. Expeditions led by Jens Munck, James Knight and Adolphus Greely famously ended in disaster, and John Franklin contributed two well-known calamities. Apart from the final Franklin tragedy, however, no dreadful demise looms larger in the Canadian imagination than that of Henry Hudson. The image of Hudson set adrift in a small boat with seven men and a boy, all victims of a mutiny in a forbidding landscape, haunts anyone awake to the nightmare history of northern exploration. That moment is at the heart of God's Mercies, an ambitious new work by Douglas Hunter, who honed his chops writing business books.