Snowman, The

In 1978 Jimmy Graham, a 34-year-old happily married father of two, scored his dream job with Operation Deepfreeze – training American scientists in survival skills in Antarctica. He left in December of that year.

Three months later he arrived back agitated and paranoid. He said that while out on the ice he had stumbled onto a secret American nuclear site and the CIA had given him a chemical lobotomy to keep him quiet. Jimmy rapidly descended into schizophrenia. His behaviour became so frightening that his wife Frances fled to safety, taking their two children Sean and Juliet with her.

For thirty years the family lived with this story, but no one ever dug deeper. The man they loved went away sane and came back permanently fractured – his mind was a blizzard.

Now Juliet wants to know what exactly did happen on that frozen continent. First she must locate Jimmy, who she finds now living a marginal, alcoholic life in a country town from where he has had little contact with his family for the past three decades. Juliet is now in her mid thirties and lives five hours from him in the city with her husband and two children of her own. Now she wants her father back. She wants a grandfather for her daughters, but will she be able to reach this fragmented man who longs to reconnect with his family?