Meltdown The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist

"Boon's work can be compared to Rachel Carsen's Silent Spring in its ability to channel scientific and human storytelling about our world at an extraordinary juncture of change and transformation. Boon is a writer who can observe field work like Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, convey anguish like Patricia Van Tighem in The Bear's Embrace, and open up silences like Maria Coffey in Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow."
– PearlAnn Reichwein, author of Climber's Paradise

"Meltdown is a deeply personal narrative that reveals the hidden challenges of academic careers, including physical struggles, mental health issues, and the complexities of identity and impostor syndrome. Through candid accounts of fieldwork, interactions with colleagues, and the pursuit of work-life balance, Sarah Boon offers an unflinching look at the highs and lows of a career set against the backdrop of Arctic expeditions and a passion for nature and science."
– Melody Sandells, Northumbria University

"With Meltdown, Sarah Boon evokes landscapes of intense vulnerability and power, inviting her readers on a journey that is both a daring adventure and a poetic meditation on seeking meaning in a precarious world."
– Katie Ives, author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams

"Meltdown is a real-life science thriller with a narrative as richly braided and unexpected as the glacial stream systems Sarah Boon studies. It's a clear-eyed, courageous look at the costs of being female in field science, suffused with deep love for the wild places where glaciers live."
– Susan J. Tweit, field botanist and author of Bless the Birds

"In Meltdown, Sarah Boon's riveting account of breaking from her courageous, exacting life as an Arctic researcher is also a hope-filled map to making it as a world-class writer."
– Rebecca Lawton, author of The Oasis This Time and other books

"A raw and honest look at the challenges of being a woman in academia, of the simultaneously competing and complementary aspects of science and art, and of the beauty, power, and fragility of icy worlds."
– Joseph Shea, University of Northern British Columbia

"Meltdown skillfully draws readers into a fast-changing world of snow and ice, glaciers and grizzlies. With unflinching honesty, Sarah Boon illuminates the hidden cracks and pitfalls in the life of a field scientist, even while her deep love of the natural world shines on every page."
– Melissa L. Sevigny, author of Brave the Wild River

"Part memoir of mental wellness and illness, part ode to learning from glaciers and forests, Meltdown is a remarkable account of the grit, joy, and danger of field research – and the power of stories alongside science."
– Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast

"Sarah Boon brings us along on her expeditions as she seeks to understand the precious, disappearing glaciers of northern Canada. Meltdown shows us in beautiful, open-hearted prose what it takes to build up a scientist over many years of trial, error, and determination [...] and how paradoxically fragile that balance can be."
– Erin Zimmerman, author of Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science

"Boon's story is a reminder that although academic doors may slam shut, the world beyond remains expansive. Opportunities to explore the landscape, and ourselves, are vast and deeply necessary."
– Anna Farro Henderson, Science