Beyond the Trees Paperback by Adam Shoalts

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2026-07-14)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 416 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781037804243
• Item Weight: 243.81 grams
• Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.52 x 2.77 cm

Winner of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario's 2016 Young Authors Award 
Winner of the 2017 Louise de Kiriline Award for Nonfiction

Adam Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles, stared down bears and climbed mountains. But, one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly. Cutting through the forbidding landscape of the Hudson Bay Lowlands is a river no hunter, no explorer, has left any record of paddling. It was this river that Shoalts was obsessively determined to explore.    

What Shoalts discovered as he paddled downriver appeared in no satellite imagery or map: a series of waterfalls that could easily have killed him. Just as astonishing was the media reaction when he got back to civilization. He was crowned "Canada's Indiana Jones" and was feted by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and congratulated by the governor general. Shoalts had proved that the world is bigger than we think.         

Gripping and often poetic, Alone Against the North is a classic adventure story of single-minded obsession, physical hardship, and the restless sense of wonder that every explorer has in common. Shoalts's story makes it clear that the world can become known only by setting out into the unfamiliar, where every step is different from the one before and something you may never have imagined lies around the next curve in the river.

About the Author

ADAM SHOALTS is a historian, archaeologist, geographer, and Westaway Explorer-in-Residence at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Shoalts holds a PhD from McMaster University where his research examined the influence Indigenous oral traditions had on fur traders in the subarctic and Pacific Northwest. He is also the author of the national bestsellers Alone Against the North, A History of Canada in Ten Maps, Beyond the Trees, The Whisper on the Night Wind, and Where the Falcon Flies. He enjoys long walks in the woods. Follow his adventures on Facebook and Instagram.