Trailer Park Tuesday: North of Hope by Shannon Huffman Polson

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

"There is a time in each of our lives when we are hurled into the terrible understanding that bedrock can crumble in the blink of an eye."  For Shannon Huffman Polson, that bedrock suddenly crumbled in 2005 when she received a phone call informing her that her father and stepmother had been killed by a bear while camped in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during a two-week kayaking trip along the Hulahula River.  In her new memoir, North of Hope: A Daughter's Arctic Journey, out today from Zondervan, Polson tells the story of how she dealt with the loss of her parents and the trip she took a year later retracing their final fatal journey along that Arctic river.  The trailer promoting the book is a simple one--too simple, I thought on my first viewing.  But then, each time I watched it I found myself more and more moved by the narration (prose lifted from the book), the haunting music, and the lines running between framed photos on a white wall, connecting them like leaves on a family tree.  As the animated lines move like fresh green shoots sprouting across the screen, you get the feeling that inner peace can likewise grow out of tragedy.  Polson writes: "This Arctic expedition was taking me to one of the most remote areas of the world and to the darkest recesses of my own pain, a journey over the jagged edge of loss, a trip into uncharted territory."  I hope you'll join me as Polson leads us on this hard, beautiful journey through grief and faith.