Sym's Antarctic ordeal under Uncle Victor
Fourteen-year-old Symone Wates, partially deaf and privately in love with the long-dead polar explorer Captain Lawrence Oates, is taken to Antarctica on a tourist expedition by Victor, a family friend she calls uncle. Victor is secretly determined to find Symmes' Hole, the supposed polar entrance to a hollow earth, and he sabotages the tour to strand the group and push inland. Sym ends up fighting to survive on the ice with a boy from the expedition while Victor's delusion drags everyone toward death.