"Fin del mundo y principio de todo." (The end of the world and the beginning of everything.)

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond is "a delicate romance, a fragile habitat, and two people who literally have gone to the end of the earth to find each other." (Booklist)

Every year, environmental scientist Deb Gardner makes the arduous journey to Ushuaia, commonly regarded as the southernmost city in the world - literally the end of the world. For a few weeks on the remote Petermann Island, she studies the Emperor and Adélie penguins in solitude, and conducts eco-tours for the cruise ship company that sponsors the research.

Keller Sullivan, a former Boston attorney appears one season to work as a dishwasher but shares Deb's passion for the environment. Soon they look forward to the blissful few weeks each season spent among their penguin family, to escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in their work and in each other. Then Keller fails to show up at the beginning of a new season.

Shortly into the journey, Deb’s ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters. Among the crew, Deb finds, is Keller.

"Midge Raymond’s phenomenal novel takes us on a voyage deep into the wonders of the Antarctic and the mysteries of the human heart. My Last Continent is packed with emotional intelligence and high stakes—a harrowing, searching novel of love and loss in one of the most remote places on earth, a land of harsh beauty where even the smallest missteps have tragic consequences... Half adventure, half elegy, and wholly recommended." -Karen Joy Fowler

Suggested read-alikes: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney; The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman; and Euphoria by Lily King.