Meltdown: The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist tells the behind-the-scenes story of my field research adventures in snow and ice science, traversing glaciers, scaring off grizzlies, and measuring raging rivers. I visited the Arctic, Rocky Mountains, Coast Mountains, and Interior British Columbia, doing research designed to answer questions about environmental change. In my book, I braid the role of women in science into my story with historic and present-day women in exploration, such as Philadelphians Mary Schäffer Warren and Mary Vaux, and Canadian Phyllis Munday. I write about how academia and being a woman in science took its toll, precipitating a mental health crisis that ultimately ended my research career and pushed me into writing.
Early reviewers had very positive feedback:
“I will buy this as soon as it’s available, even though I have already read it.”
“A gripping style and contents will lead readers to read this book cover-to-cover. Storytelling and truth telling bind the book together as a memoir that never stops driving forward with intrigue. I found it was hard to put it down.”
“Boon is a writer who can observe field work like Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac, convey anguish like Patricia Van Tighem in The Bear’s Embrace: A True Story of a Grizzly Bear Attack, and open up silences like Maria Coffey in Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure.”
“It does not put an unwarranted positive spin on situations and while this can be uncomfortable at times, it makes the book much more powerful for it.”