The Blue Hours: My Summers and Winter in Antarctica

by Stephanie Krzywonos

A sweeping memoir of seven seasons spent living in Antarctica, and what it means to push past the boundaries of the known world and your own limits.

Humans have romanticized Antarctica for centuries. To Stephanie Krzywonos, Antarctica is a place to search for answers—and something larger than herself.

Hungry for the sublime and haunted over her best friend’s tragic death, Stephanie leaves her entire life behind to live in Antarctica as an ordinary worker and tests the limits of survival. Over six polar summers and one astonishing winter, she encounters adorable penguins, colossal glaciers, and whiteout storms. In old explorers’ huts, the traces of ghosts show the extremes to which people are willing to go to find peace. In this rare account of an Antarctic winter, the sun disappears for over four months, and Stephanie reckons with Antarctica’s complicated past alongside her own grief and desire to live—all while auroras, the moon, sunrise, and darkness itself nourish her. Antarctica has come to symbolize despair and hope in a rapidly warming planet. Who truly belongs there? In a wounded world filled with so much loss, is healing even possible?

An exquisite blend of memoir, history, criticism, and science, The Blue Hours illuminates hidden histories of life on “the Ice” and the gives voice to the natives—seals and whales, ice and rock—that make up the extraordinary body of Antarctica herself.

Genres: Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Expected publication December 1, 2026

Reviews

[Leila Pahlavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

This book did not deliver the experience I expected.

Much of the narrative centers on the author’s severe depression, suicidal ideations, and the emotional aftermath of losing a friend to suicide. While those themes are deeply personal and important, they ultimately overshadowed the memoir itself. Less than half of the book actually focuses on her day-to-day experiences living and working in Antarctica.

The rest felt scattered between acronyms, metaphors, polar lexicon, feminist and sexist commentary, environmental messaging and non-chronological retellings of earlier Antarctic expeditions such as the Terra Nova Expedition. There have already been countless books written about those expeditions, and if I wanted a historical account, I would have chosen one directly.

The author clearly wanted to raise awareness about humanity’s impact on Antarctica’s ecosystem, but I did not think it was done in a coherent or compelling way. I love nature and animals, but that is not why I picked up this book. I wanted to read about her firsthand experiences in Antarctica, not extended passages about whales, penguins, huskies and the many animals harmed or abandoned throughout Antarctic history.

The book also repeatedly detours into discussions of Māori beliefs, Greek mythology and the meanings of various words. While I understand the author was likely trying to add philosophical or cultural depth, these sections often felt unrelated to the memoir itself and pulled me further away from the Antarctic experience I was hoping to read about.

Overall, the memoir felt unfocused and very different from how it was marketed.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was chock full of really interesting recent info about working at McMurdo Station in Antarctica and historical info about past explorers in The Heroic Age. The author had obviously done a ton of research on history, various aspects of exploration, climate change and the seasonal challenges of getting to and living in Antarctica.

The parts of the book that didn’t work so well for me were when the author suddenly segued to memories from her college years during which her best friend committed suicide. She had lingering grief as well as guilt about whether she had been somewhat responsible for his decision to commit suicide. I understand that these episodes were part of “The Blue Hours” and that this trauma was part of the reason she chose to go to Antarctica in her quest for self-discovery. However, that part of the narrative was not logically or seamlessly integrated into the Antarctica experience. It was actually quite jarring at times when she flipped back into that era.

It’s a very ambitious memoir which I found quite informative regarding both the history of Antarctica experience and the current conditions and challenges.

[Carissa Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC!

When I read about this book I was very excited to read it. I lived the idea of reading about a woman finding herself in Antarctica. I love learning while I read so I was looking forward to that as well. However, the actual project is a hodge podge of indecipherable meaning. Yes, the author is trying to heal and find her path after losing her best friend to suicide. However, the memoir does not follow only that line. We deal with the author's depression, how she feels she is treated poorly because of her gender and race, how she doesnt know what she wants to do with her life, and so much more. Maybe I just couldn't connect with these themes even though I am a woman- but it felt like a blanket was being thrown out to try to cover all big ticket themes. These themes also included climate change, endangered species, pollution and SO much random research I felt I was reading a textbook at some points. The author used some beautiful language, but the book is just too all over the place for my liking.

[Nancy Klarich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC electronic book. Another hit and miss for me. I was hoping for so much more about the authors experience while living I n Antarctica. While there was some enlightening information about life there, I found the unexpected jumps to past South Pole explorations and also to her college life with a friend’s depression and then suicide to be misplaced. I think organized a little differently I would have been able to finish.