Rebecca Johns's tautly written debut novel looks at how [the effects of the war] lingered into the next generation, with often devastating consequences….Johns has shaped a powerful narrative about the complicated ties that bind.— The Independent ( UK )  Read More Praise


Overview:  A multigenerational story that explores how tragedies narrowly averted can alter the course of lives as drastically as those met head-on, Icebergs follows two families through love, war, and fate from World War II to the present.

Walt Dunmore and Alister Clark are the only members of their B-24 bomber crew to survive a plane wreck on the Labrador coast. Injured, freezing, and alone, they must find a way to survive in the sub-zero wilderness and wait for a rescue that may not come in time.

On the home front, in a small Canadian farming community, Walt’s young wife, Dottie, struggles with her own battles, including loneliness, worry, and an attraction to an itinerant farm worker. She meets and befriends Alister’s wife, Adele, but when only one man comes home alive from Labrador, neither woman is prepared for the direction her life will take her.

Years later, when both families relocate to Chicago, questions of loyalty and bravery ensnare their children. Caroline Clark’s close relationship with her mother is both her greatest asset and biggest obstacle. Sam Dunmore, now an American citizen, must decide whether or not to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a soldier on the eve of the escalation of the Vietnam War. The novel follows the characters into old age, when decades-old secrets illuminate the present and the past, including death and survival, war and domesticity, love and deceit.

Praise for Icebergs

"Johns is ambitious enough to tell a story that spans several generations, revitalizing the wartime genre. Her meticulous presentation of details will make readers feel they are actually witnessing the events...This work has the appeal of a best seller."  — Library Journal 

With stark, lovely prose, Johns weaves a delicate tapestry of linked narratives, confirming that the paths not taken can be as significant as the ones taken. Like a ship navigating around an iceberg, "even near-misses leave a wake, an invisible breath that moves through the air."
— Publisher's Weekly


"A deeply satisfying novel that shows how people--like icebergs--often reveal only 10 percent of themselves, while the rest remains hidden beneath the surface." — Booklist


An enormous and breathtaking debut novel, Icebergs reminds us how our fates are shaped as much by the senselessness of history and tragedies as by our most private desires and sorrows. Like the best novelists, Johns paints the landscapes of her work with masterful strokes and reveals the fragility and stoicism of her characters with the greatest tenderness and sympathy, letting their inner worlds collide with the outside, and with each other, to create this haunting and beautiful tale about human love with-and despite-death, loss, deceit and misunderstanding.
— Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers


"Rebecca Johns is a beautiful storyteller."
— Jennifer Haigh, author of Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble


"In her wise, luminous debut spanning generations, Rebecca Johns has given us a great gift of a book. You won't soon forget this constellation of characters, nor the riveting story of two families bound and altered by war." — Kate Walbert, author of The Gardens of Kyoto and Our Kind (nominated for a National Book Award)


"Johns unpeels the layers of her heartbreaking first novel with all the patience and confidence of a master. Her two families, thrust together by tragedy, united by love and suspicion, never let the hardness of the world prevent them from being kind. Icebergs manages to feel both epic in its scope and intimate in its fine attention to character. A debut of remarkable grace, maturity, and wisdom." — Robert Rosenberg, author of This is Not Civilization